Kater received his B.A. in physics from Reed College in 2002. After that, he spent a long year slacking off, working as a bee keeper, honing his guitar skills, and studying the cello before finally starting his Ph.D. work at UC Berkeley with Prof. Dan Stamper-Kurn. Kater focused his interests on general problems in quantum measurement, and performed some of the first studies of position measurement quantum backaction. For a postdoc, he joined Irfan Siddiqi's group to study superconducting quantum circuits, where he continued to study basic questions in quantum measurement and quantum noise—focusing on quantum trajectories and open quantum systems.
In 2014 Kater joined the faculty at Washington University and built a research program focusing on quantum technologies in fabricated quantum systems, open quantum systems and dissipation engineering, and quantum sensing applications. His lab utilizes superconducting circuits to explore fundamental questions in quantum information, develops novel platforms like single electrons trapped on solid neon, and applies quantum sensors to searches for dark matter. As co-director of the Center for Quantum Leaps at WashU, Kater helped establish collaborative quantum research spanning multiple schools. He also co-founded Gateway Quantum Technologies in 2023 and Facet Lab in 2025, advancing quantum technology commercialization.
Kater has received several awards including the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship in Physics, the St. Louis Academy of Science Innovation Award, the Cottrell Scholar Award, an NSF CAREER Award, the Experimental Physics Investigator Award from the Moore Foundation, and an outstanding reviewer award from APS.
Open Quantum Systems and Non-Hermitian Physics, Quantum Sensing and Metrology, Superconducting Quantum Circuits, Dark Matter Detection, Quantum Thermodynamics
PUBLICATIONS
Zheng K, Song X, Murch KW., Surface Morphology Assisted Trapping of Strongly Coupled Electron-on-Neon Charge States. Phys Rev Lett. 135, 080601 (2025)
Song X, Salvati F, Gaikwad C, Yunger Halpern N, Arvidsson-Shukur DRM, Murch K. Agnostic Phase Estimation. Phys Rev Lett. 132, 260801 (2024)
Gaikwad C, Kowsari D, Brame C, Song X, Zhang H, Esposito M, Ranadive A, Cappelli G, Roch N, Levenson-Falk EM, Murch KW. Entanglement assisted probe of the non-Markovian to Markovian transition in open quantum system dynamics. Phys Rev Lett. 132, 200401 (2024)
Abbasi M, Chen W, Naghiloo M, Joglekar YN, Murch KW. Topological Quantum State Control through Exceptional-Point Proximity. Phys Rev Lett. 128(16):160401 (2022)
Chen W, Abbasi M, Ha B, Erdamar S, Joglekar YN, Murch KW. Decoherence-Induced Exceptional Points in a Dissipative Superconducting Qubit. Phys Rev Lett. 128(11):110402 (2022)
Zhou X, Koolstra G, Zhang X, Yang G, Han X, Dizdar B, Li X, Divan R, Guo W, Murch KW, Schuster DI, Jin D. Single electrons on solid neon as a solid-state qubit platform. Nature. 605(7908):46-50 (2022)
Naghiloo M, Abbasi M, Joglekar Y, Murch KW Quantum state tomography across the exceptional point in a single dissipative qubit. Nature Physics. 15:1232-36 (2019)
Tan D, Weber SJ, Siddiqi I, Mølmer K, Murch KW. Prediction and retrodiction for a continuously monitored superconducting qubit. Phys Rev Lett. 114(9):090403 (2015)
Weber SJ, Chantasri A, Dressel J, Jordan AN, Murch KW, Siddiqi I. Mapping the optimal route between two quantum states. Nature. 511(7511):570-3 (2014)
Murch KW, Weber SJ, Macklin C, Siddiqi I. Observing single quantum trajectories of a superconducting quantum bit. Nature. 502(7470):211-4 (2013)