Monika Schleier-Smith

Early life

Schleier-Smith grew up in the Alexandria, Virginia area. Her mother holds a Ph.D. in linguistics. She has an older brother. where she had an opportunity to conduct nanotechnology research at the MITRE Corporation. and was recognized by the Hertz Foundation with a Doctoral Thesis Prize.

From 2011 to 2013, Schleier-Smith conducted postdoctoral research at LMU Munich with Professor Immanuel Bloch's group at Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics. An important regime under investigation is the entanglement frontier.

In 2020, Schleier-Smith was named a MacArthur Fellow, for her quantum technology research, and received an unrestricted stipend of $625,000.

In 2024, she was named one of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation's Experimental Physics Investigators, and received a five-year, $1.25 million grant for her research at Stanford.

Personal

During her years at Harvard and MIT, Schleier-Smith completed the Boston Marathon six times.

Recognition and awards

Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (2014) AFOSR Young Investigator Award, Air Force Office of Scientific Research (2014) Hellman Fellowship, Hellman Fellows Fund (2015) Cottrell Scholar Award, Research Corporation (2017) NSF Career Award, National Science Foundation (2018) Listed as top 10 scientists to watch by Science News Journal (2019) Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), Department of Defense (2019) MacArthur Fellowship, MacArthur Foundation (2020) I.I Rabi Prize in Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, American Physical Society (2021) Fellow of the American Physical Society (2021) Benjamin Franklin NextGen Award (2024)

Publications Her recent publications include:

Rudelis A, Hu B, Sinclair J, Bytyqi E, Schwartzman A, Brenes R, Kadosh Zhitomirsky T, Schleier-Smith M, Vuletić V. Degradation of TaO / SiO dielectric cavity mirrors in ultra-high vacuum. Optics Express. 31: 39670–39680. PMID 38041283 DOI: 10.1364/OE.504858 Hines JA, Rajagopal SV, Moreau GL, Wahrman MD, Lewis NA, Marković O, Schleier-Smith M. Spin Squeezing by Rydberg Dressing in an Array of Atomic Ensembles. Physical Review Letters. 131: 063401. PMID 37625064 DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.063401 Schleier-Smith M. Solving a puzzle with atomic qubits. Science. 376: 1155–1156. PMID 35679424 DOI: 10.1126/science.abq3754 Davis EJ, Periwal A, Cooper ES, Bentsen G, Evered SJ, Van Kirk K, Schleier-Smith MH. Protecting Spin Coherence in a Tunable Heisenberg Model. Physical Review Letters. 125: 060402. PMID 32845652 DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.060402 Borish V, Marković O, Hines JA, Rajagopal SV, Schleier-Smith M. Transverse-Field Ising Dynamics in a Rydberg-Dressed Atomic Gas. Physical Review Letters. 124: 063601. PMID 32109106 DOI: 10.1103/Physrevlett.124.063601 Bentsen G, Hashizume T, Buyskikh AS, Davis EJ, Daley AJ, Gubser SS, Schleier-Smith M. Treelike Interactions and Fast Scrambling with Cold Atoms. Physical Review Letters. 123: 130601. PMID 31697527 DOI: 10.1103/Physrevlett.123.130601 Davis EJ, Bentsen G, Homeier L, Li T, Schleier-Smith MH. Photon-Mediated Spin-Exchange Dynamics of Spin-1 Atoms. Physical Review Letters. 122: 010405. PMID 31012698 DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.010405 Bentsen G, Potirniche I, Bulchandani VB, Scaffidi T, Cao X, Qi X, Schleier-Smith M, Altman E. Integrable and Chaotic Dynamics of Spins Coupled to an Optical Cavity Physical Review X. 9. DOI: 10.1103/Physrevx.9.041011 Marino J, Shchadilova YE, Schleier-Smith M, Demler EA. Spectrum, Landau–Zener theory and driven-dissipative dynamics of a staircase of photons New Journal of Physics. 21: 013009. DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/Aaf825