Daniel Slichter is a staff research scientist at Google Quantum AI, where he is helping to lead development of neutral atom-based quantum computers.
Slichter was formerly a staff physicist in the Ion Storage Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colorado. His research focused on quantum information experiments with trapped atomic ions, with an emphasis on developing new paradigms for scalable trapped ion quantum computing. Projects included demonstrating high-fidelity two-ion entangling operations based on microwave and rf magnetic fields instead of lasers; using strong unitary squeezing of ion motion to enhance ion-ion interactions and to perform electric field sensing below the standard quantum limit; and integrating superconducting photon detectors into microfabricated ion traps as an initial step in building a fully chip-integrated trapped ion quantum processor.
Slichter received his A.B. in physics from Harvard University in 2004, his M.A. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2007, and his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2011. His Ph.D. research was in superconducting quantum information, where he performed the first continuous high-fidelity state readout of a superconducting qubit and studied quantum feedback, measurement backaction, and near-quantum-limited parametric amplification. This work was recognized with the Hertz Foundation Thesis Prize in 2012. He has been at NIST since 2012, first as a postdoctoral fellow, then as a staff physicist, and now as a senior research associate. He has also been a Lecturer in Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder since 2019. He joined Google Quantum AI in 2026.
Slichter was the recipient of a Hertz Foundation Fellowship (2006-2011), an NRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (2012-2014), and a Kavli Fellowship (2016). At NIST, he was a recipient of the Jacob Rabinow Applied Research Award (2022) and a NIST Bronze Medal (2024). He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, and served as an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Quantum Engineering. He has been an active and enthusiastic volunteer for the Hertz Foundation in many roles since his days as an in-school Fellow.
