February 4, 2008 4:00 AM PST
Stuart Parkin (standing), one of the reigning celebrities in thin film magnetic research. His work on thin magnetic film structures allowed IBM, among others, to exploit the giant magnetoresistive effect to significantly boost the density of hard drives.
Parkin, an IBM fellow and manager of the company's magnetoelectronics research, is currently studying magnetic tunnel junctions. Memory exploiting magnetic tunneling would store data by
controlling the direction of magnetic fields. IBM and TDK are working together, while start-up
Grandis is trying the same thing.
Photo by Corinne Schulze/CNET News.com
