2024 Presidential Rank Award - John Kitching

Dr. John Kitching has pioneered the development of chip-scale atomic clocks and magnetometers. A NIST scientist since 2003, he holds several patents in the areas of spectroscopy and quantum systems. Dr. Kitching helped initiate the NIST on a Chip program and his ground-breaking inventions of the chip-scale atomic clock and chip-scale atomic magnetometer earned him recognition as a 2022 Fellow of both the National Academy of Inventors and IEEE.

Dr.  Kitching has developed compact devices and instruments that combine atomic spectroscopy, silicon micromachining and photonics. Under the NIST on a Chip program, he is now working to develop compact, SI-traceable standards of length, time, voltage, current and temperature. 

Dr. Kitching received his BSc in Physics from McGill University in 1990 and his PhD degree in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1995. He served as co-chair of the APS Division of Laser Science Annual Meeting in 2008, and co-chair of the Technical Program Committee of the IEEE International Frequency Control Symposium in 2019.