Abstract: The spins of electrons confined in semiconductor quantum dots represent versatile building blocks for solid-state quantum information processing devices. Within these systems, manipulation via electric fields enables both rapid control and protection from noise. I will describe our theoretical investigations of single-electron and multi-electron quantum dot systems with electrically controllable spin relaxation, highly tunable exchange interactions, and quantum gates robust against charge noise. These features yield approaches for rapid single-spin initialization as well as for controllably coupling donor electron spin qubits in silicon.