Prof Daniel Loss

Chair Professor and Center Director

Daniel Loss is a Swiss theoretical physicist and one of the founders of spin-based quantum computing. In 1998, together with David DiVincenzo of IBM, he proposed the Loss-DiVincenzo quantum computer, which established the use of electron spin qubits in semiconductor quantum dots and has been cited more than nine thousand times. He received his PhD in physics from the University of Zurich in 1985, held postdoctoral positions in Zurich and at the University of Illinois with Nobel laureate Anthony Leggett, worked at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center, joined Simon Fraser University in 1993 and became full professor of theoretical physics at the University of Basel in 1996, where he directs the Basel Center for Quantum Computing and Quantum Coherence and co-directs the Swiss Nanoscience Institute. In 2025 he joined King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran as RDIA Chair Professor of Quantum Computing, a chair established with Saudi Arabia's Research, Development and Innovation Authority, and as director of the university's Interdisciplinary Research Center for Advanced Quantum Computing. His research covers spin and charge phenomena in nanostructures, decoherence, nuclear spin physics, topological matter and Majorana fermions, and his honours include the Humboldt Prize in 2005, the Marcel Benoist Prize in 2010, the Blaise Pascal Medal in Physics in 2014, the King Faisal International Prize in Science in 2017 and Clarivate Citation Laureate recognition in 2025.