Quantum information processors hold great promise for investigating classically intractable computations, with applications in fields such as quantum simulation, optimization and many others. Trapped atomic ions are leading candidates to serve as the fundamental quantum bits (qubits) in such quantum processors, due to the high-fidelity operations with which their internal states can be manipulated and the isolation of these internal states from environmental perturbations. Several challenges must be overcome, however, in order to increase the qubit system size beyond relatively small-scale laboratory demonstrations to much larger, computationally-useful systems. In this talk, I will discuss techniques and technologies being developed and implemented at MIT Lincoln Laboratory to address some of these challenges. In particular, I will highlight some of our recent results involving the transfer of quantum state information between two ions of different atomic species as a means to mitigate the deleterious effects of scattered laser light during state detection.