Physicist to Discuss "The Spin on Electronics" as Part of Rustgi Lecture

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Stuart Parkin, an experimental physicist with the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., will speak on "The Spin on Electronics" at the 13th annual Moti Lal Rustgi Memorial Lecture at 4 p.m. April 6 in 225 Natural Sciences Complex, North Campus.

The Rustgi lecture, presented by the Department of Physics, College of Arts and Sciences, will be free and open to the public. The annual lecture is held to honor the late Moti Lal Rustgi, professor of physics at UB from 1966-92.

A Fellow of the American Physical Society and Consulting Professor in Applied Physics at Stanford University since 1997, Parkin has conducted research into the behavior of thin-film magnetic structures that has been critical in enabling recent increases in the data density and capacity of computer hard-disk drives.

He also made key discoveries that led to IBM's pioneering use of the giant magnetoresistive (GMR) effect to read disk-drive data bits that were far smaller than could have been previously detected.

Parkin currently is studying magnetic tunnel junctions -- which require just a few atomic layers of an electrical insulator between magnetic layers to create large resistance changes perpendicular to the layers' planes -- and their use in both disk-drive recording heads more sensitive than GMR heads, as well as a new type of solid-state, non-volatile, magnetic random access memory (MRAM). Tunnel-junction heads may enable data-storage densities beyond 100 billion bits per square inch, while magnetic RAM chips could lead to instant-on computers with much better performance, energy-efficiency and battery life.

Parkin was elected to IBM's Academy of Technology in 1997 and was named one of IBM's Master Inventors. In 1999 he was named an IBM Fellow -- IBM's highest technical honor -- and in May 2000 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (London). R&D Magazine named Parkin "Innovator of the Year" in 2001.

A native of Watford, England, Parkin received a Ph.D. in 1980 from the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England. He joined IBM in 1982 as a World Trade Postdoctoral Fellow, becoming a permanent member of the staff the following year.

For more information about the Rustgi lecture, call 645-2017, or email Michael Fuda, professor of physics, at fuda@buffalo.edu.