Travel guide

Stéphane Mangin has been a Professor since 2008 at Université de Lorraine where he heads the research team of Nanomagnetism and Spintronics at the Institut Jean Lamour. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society. He is the scientific director of a unique tool (TUBE-Davm) : a 70 meter Tube under Ultra High Vacuum which connects 30 equipments to growth and characterize material down to the atomic scale. In 2004-05, he was a visiting scientist at the Hitachi research center in Almaden – California. And in 2012-2013 he was a visiting Professor at the Center for Memory Recording Research at UC San Diego. Since 2013 Stephane Mangin is a Member of the scientific committee of the French Parliament Technology Assessment Office – OPECST – and since 2015 he is a Co-Founder of the French-US International Associated Laboratory on Nanoelectronics as well as a member of the Lorraine Academy of Science. He is a member of the World Material Forum steering committee. He holds a PhD in Physics from Université Joseph Fourrier in Grenoble.

Luis Lopez Diaz is professor in the Department of Applied Physics at the University of Salamanca. His field of expertise is micromagnetic modelling, in which he has been working on for more than twenty years. During his PhD (Univeristy of Salamanca, 1999), focused on simulating domain wall motion in systems with non-magnetic inclusions, he spent over a year at the Institute for Magnetics Research (The George Washington University). Later on he was postdoctoral Marie Curie fellow in the Thin Film Magnetism Group at the Cavendish Laboratory (University of Cambridge), were he investigated different nanostructured systems, such as nanorings and antidot arrays. Over the last years his work has been oriented towards the field of spintronics, namely current-induced spin-transfer phenomena, such as domain wall motion, self-sustained oscillations, spin wave excitation, etc. He has participated in more than twenty research projects funded by either European, national and regional institutions, being scientist in charge in some of them.

Kai Liu is a Professor and McDevitt Chair in Physics at the Georgetown University. His research interest is in experimental studies of magnetism and spin transport in nanostructured materials. He was recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and a UC Davis Chancellor’s Fellowship. He is also an elected Fellow of the Institute of Physics (UK), American Physical Society, IEEE and American Association for the Advancement of Science. He served as the General Chair for the 61st Annual Conference on Magnetism and Magnetic Materials (2016 MMM). He is also an Associate Editor for APL Materials.

Andrei Kirilyuk obtained his degree in physics (cum laude) from the Moscow Institute for Physics and Technology (State University) in 1988, and gained his doctorate at Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Université Paris-Sud in 1993. After postdoctoral stays at Max-Plank-Institut für Mikrostrukturphysik (Halle/Saale) and Radboud University he was appointed assistant and in 2012 full professor of physics in Nijmegen. Andrei Kirilyuk is an expert in the field of (nonlinear) magneto-optics and ultrafast magnetization dynamics, magnetic domain dynamics, magnetic surfaces, ultrathin films and nanomagnetism in general, down to the smallest dimensions.

Andrew Kent is a Professor of Physics and Founding Director of the Center for Quantum Phenomena at New York University. He received a B.Sc. with Distinction in Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University in 1982 and his Ph.D. from Stanford University in Applied Physics in 1988. He conducted post-doctoral research at the University of Geneva in Switzerland and the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. His research interests are in the physics of magnetic nanostructures, nanomagnetic devices and magnetic information storage. Kent has expertise in thin film growth and characterization, device nanofabrication and high frequency measurements including, ferromagnetic resonance, electron paramagnetic resonance and time-resolved studies of magnetization dynamics. In 2007 he founded Spin Memory (formerly named Spin Transfer Technology), a startup company developing spin torque magnetic random access memory devices he invented at NYU.

Kent is a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), has served as chair of APS topical group on magnetism and its applications (GMAG) and is an advisory board member of the Committee of Concerned Scientists. He served on the executive committee of the APS Division of Condensed Matter Physics (DCMP) and Program Co-Chair of the 58th Annual Magnetism and Magnetic Materials conference (MMM 2013). Kent accomplishments were recognized by an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Lorraine (“Docteur Honoris Causa” de l’Universite de Lorraine), in September 2013. He received the French Jean d’Alembert Research Fellowship in 2017 and was named Professor at Lorraine in the 2018 Lorraine University Excellence Initiative.

Vincent Jacques (39 years old) is a CNRS research associate working at Laboratoire Charles Coulomb (Montpellier, France). His research is mainly focused on the study of deep, optically-active, defects in wide bandgap materials and their applications in various fields of research ranging from quantum optics and quantum information science, to nanoscale sensing and hybrid quantum systems. In the recent years, his research group has demonstrated how nanoscale magnetic sensing with a single nitrogen-vacancy defect in diamond can be used as a powerful tool to explore the physics of exotic spin textures in thin magnetic materials. He has published more than 75 articles in international peer-review journals. He is a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt foundation, and he was recipient of the Edouard Branly prize from the “Fédération française des sociétés scientifiques” (2013) and of an ERC starting grant (2014).

Prof. Dr. Hans J. Hug received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Basel in Switzerland in 1993, and his Habilitation on Quantitative Magnetic Force Microscopy at Low Temperatures on Ferromagnetic Materials and High Temperature Superconductors in 2000. He and his team won the Swiss Technology Award for the Development of a High-Resolution Magnetic Force Microscope for the Hard-Disk Industry in 2003.
After rejecting a position as a full professor at the University of Twente in the Netherlands in 2003, he was promoted to Titularprofessor at the Department of Physics of the University of Basel and took a position as a laboratory head at Empa – the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research in 2004.
Prof. Hug also served as the director of the ETH domain CCMX platform for Nano- and Micrometer Scale Materials Characterization and as a supervisory board member in two startup companies.

Axel Hoffmann has obtained his Diploma degree in physics from the RWTH Aachen in 1994 and his PhD degree in physics from the University of California – San Diego in 1999.  Subsequently he worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow.  In 2001 he joined the Argonne National Laboratory as a staff scientist, and became in 2014 the Senior Group Leader of the Magnetic Thin Film Group within the Materials Science Division.  In 2019 he joined the Department of Materials Science an Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a Full Professor.  His research interests encompass a wide variety of magnetism related subjects, including basic properties of magnetic heterostructures, spin-transport in novel geometries, and biomedical applications of magnetism.  His main research focus has recently been on pure spin currents investigated by magnetotransport and magnetization dynamic measurements.  He has more than 200 publications, five book chapters, three magnetism-related U.S. patents, and edited two books.  He is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Applied Physics and a fellow of the American Physical Society, American Vacuum Society, and IEEE.  His awards include Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Magnetics Society in 2011, Outstanding Researcher Award by the Prairie Section of the American Vacuum Society 2015, President’s International Fellowship from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2016, and the Distinguished Performance Award of the University of Chicago in 2017.

Burkard Hillebrands is full professor of experimental physics at the University of Kaiserslautern. After studies at the University of Cologne and a postdoctoral stay at the Optical Sciences Center in Tucson, Arizona he was associate professor at the University of Karlsruhe in 1994. Since 1995 he is full professor at the University of Kaiserslautern. From 2006 to 2014 he was Vice President for Research, Technology and Innovation of University of Kaiserslautern. From 2016 to 2017 he served as Scientific Director of the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden. His research field is experimental magnetism, in particular magnonics. He is particularly interested in nonlinear magnonic phenomena, magnonic crystals, magnon gases, magnon condensates and magnonic supercurrent phenomena in view of applications in novel information technologies such as magnon logics.
He serves as president of the European Magnetism Association, and as Chair of the of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP), Commission C9: Magnetism. He is member, Chair of the Class of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, and Vice President of the Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz. He is member of the National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech). He is IEEE Fellow, APS Fellow and Fellow of the Institute of Physics, London. In 2005 he was Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Magnetics Society. In 2016 he received an ERC Advanced Grant of the European Commission. He served on the Administrative Committee of the IEEE Magnetics Society and was Honors&Awards Chair. Since 2018, he is Chair and Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Helmholtz Center Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), and also Member of the HZDR Supervisory Board.
He has published more than 400 refereed articles, book contributions, and several patents.

Pietro Gambardella graduated summa cum laude in Physics from the University of Genova and obtained his PhD degree from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), with a thesis on the growth, electronic, and magnetic properties of metallic nanowires. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institut for Solid State Physics in Stuttgart, Germany and a research assistant at EPFL until 2005. In 2006, he was appointed ICREA Research Professor at the Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology in Barcelona. Since 2013 he is Full Professor in the Department of Materials at ETH Zurich. His research interests are in the areas of magnetism, spintronics, and interface physics.

Eric Fullerton is a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, San Diego in the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and NanoEngineering and is an Endowed Chair and Director of the Center for Memory and Recording Research. He received his B.Sc. in Physics from Harvey Mudd College in 1984 and his Ph.D. in Physics from UC San Diego in 1991. Previous to joining UC San Diego he held research positions at Argonne National Laboratory, the IBM Almaden Research Center and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. His current research focuses the synthesis and characterization of magnetic nanostructures, both as a probe of materials in reduced dimensions and for the development of novel information technologies. He has co-authored >350 journal articles, been issued 51 US patents, is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the IEEE and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Ursula Ebels After her PhD in Physics in 1995 (University of Cambridge UK), and two postdoctoral positions (Ohio State University, USA and IPCMS in Strasbourg, France) she joined in 2002 SPINTEC laboratory as a CEA research engineer to develop the RF magnetisation dynamics group. In 2009 she obtained her habilitation. Her current research work focuses on the fundamental and applied aspects of spin torque nano-oscillators. She coordinated three French ANR projects and one FP7 project on this.

Mathias Kläui is professor of physics at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz and adjunct professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He received his PhD at the University of Cambridge, after which he joined the IBM Research Labs in Zürich. He was a junior group leader at the University of Konstanz and then became associate professor in a joint appointment between the EPFL and the PSI in Switzerland before moving to Mainz. His research focuses on nanomagnetism and spin dynamics on the nanoscale in new materials. His research covers from blue sky fundamental science to applied projects with major industrial partners. He has published more than 270 articles and given more than 200 invited talks. He is a Senior member of the IEEE and has been elected to the technical and administrative committees of the magnetics society. He is also a Fellow of the IOP and has been awarded a number of prizes and scholarships.
Contact details and more information at www.klaeui-lab.de, klaeui@uni-mainz.de

Prof. Stephan Roche is working at the Catalan Institute of Nanosciences and Nanotechnology-ICN2 and the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology. He leads the “Theoretical and Computational Nanoscience” group which focuses on quantum physics in Dirac materials (graphene and topological insulators). He pioneered the development of linear scaling computational approaches for wavepacket dynamics, Kubo conductivities, and Landauer-Büttiker conductance in disordered materials. He studied Theoretical Physics at ENS and University UJF (France), received a PhD in Physics in 1996 (CNRS), and worked in Japan, Spain and Germany. He was appointed Assistant Prof. at UJF (2000) and CEA Researcher (2004). He received the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel prize from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Germany). He is the PI of ICN2 in the GRAPHENE FLAGSHIP, and is deputy leader of the Graphene Spintronics Workpackage.

Christos Panagopoulos received his PhD from the University of Cambridge (Trinity College) in 1997. He has since held positions as Trinity College Research Fellow and Royal Society University Fellow at the University of Cambridge – United Kingdom, Professor of Physics at the University of Crete – Greece, and Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at the Nanyang Technological University – Singapore. He is also the inaugural Investigator of the National Research Foundation, Prime Minister’s Office – Singapore and Affiliate Professor at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. He received education and training from The Royal Society and Imperial College on The Business of Science, chaired panels on research and education, and serves as reviewer on strategic initiatives for research Centers in North America, Asia and Europe. He has published more than 100 research articles in condensed matter physics, delivered numerous key note speeches and courses in international graduate schools, and over 200 invited presentations at conferences and universities.

Nicola Spaldin is the Professor of Materials Theory at ETH Zurich. She developed the class of materials known as multiferroics, which combine simultaneous ferromagnetism and ferroelectricity, for which she received the 2017 L’Oréal-UNESCO for Women in Science award. She is a passionate science educator, coordinator of her department’s curriculum revision project, “The Materials Scientist 2030, Who is She?” , and holder of the ETH Golden Owl Award for excellence in teaching. When not trying to make a room-temperature superconductor, she can be found playing her clarinet, skiing, or climbing in the Alps.

Julie Grollier is researcher director in the CNRS/Thales lab in France, where she is leading the “Nanodevices for Bio-Inspired Computing” team.
Julie completed her Ph.D in the field of spintronics at Pierre and Marie Curie University, under the supervision of Albert Fert. After two years of post-doc, first in Groningen University (Netherlands, group of B.J. van Wees), then in Institut d’Electronique Fondamentale (France, group of C. Chappert), she joined CNRS in 2005. Her current research interests include spintronics and novel nanodevices for neuromorphic computing. Julie has over 100 publications, and is a frequent invited speaker in international conferences. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. In 2010 she was awarded the Jacques Herbrand prize of the French Academy of Science. In 2013, she created the interdisciplinary research network GDR BioComp, which goal is to produce hardware bio-inspired systems, and chaired it for five years. In, 2018 she received the Silver Medal of CNRS in Physics for her pioneering work on spintronics and brain-inspired computing. She is the recipient of two prestigious European Research Council grants: “NanoBrain” project (Memristive Artificial Synapses and their integration in Neural Networks, 2010-2015) and “BioSPINSpired” project (Bio-inspired Spin-Torque Computing Architectures, 2016-2021).

Zhihong Chen received her B.S. degree in physics from Fudan University in 1998, and her Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of Florida in 2003. After two years of postdoctoral research at IBM T.J. Watson research center, she became a research staff member in the Physical Science Department. In 2008, she was appointed as the manager of the Carbon Technology Group at IBM, where she was in charge of evaluating the potential of carbon materials and the development of novel carbon-based technologies for commercial applications. She joined the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University in 2010. Her research interests focus on novel materials and device and circuit designs for beyond-CMOS applications. She has become the Director of the SRC nCORE NEW LIMITS Center since 2018, and Associated Director of Research for Birck Nanotechnology Center in 2019.

Massimiliano Di Ventra obtained his undergraduate degree in Physics summa cum laude from the University of Trieste (Italy) in 1991 and did his PhD studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Lausanne in 1993-1997. He has been Visiting Scientist at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center and Research Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University before joining the Physics Department of Virginia Tech in 2000 as Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2003 and moved to the Physics Department of the University of California, San Diego, in 2004 where he was promoted to Full Professor in 2006.

Di Ventra’s research interests are in the theory of quantum transport in nanoscale and atomic systems, non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, DNA sequencing/polymer dynamics in nanopores, and memory effects in nanostructures for applications in unconventional computing and biophysics.

He has been invited to deliver more than 300 talks worldwide on these topics including 14 plenary/keynote presentations and 10 talks at the March Meeting of the American Physical Society.

He has been Visiting Professor at the Technion, Israel (2017), Technical University of Dresden (2015), University Paris-Sud (2015), Technical University of Denmark (2014), Ben-Gurion University (2013), Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (2012, 2011), and SISSA, Trieste (2012).

Di Ventra has published more than 200 papers in refereed journals (he was named 2018 Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics), has 4 granted patents, co-edited the textbook Introduction to Nanoscale Science and Technology (Springer, 2004) for undergraduate students, he is single author of the graduate-level textbook Electrical Transport in Nanoscale Systems (Cambridge University Press, 2008), and of the trade book The Scientific Method: Reflections from a Practitioner (Oxford University Press, 2018). He is the co-founder of MemComputing, Inc.

Jacqueline M. Cole is Head of Molecular Engineering at the University of Cambridge. She concurrently holds the BASF/Royal Academy of Engineering Senior Research Fellowship in Data-Driven Molecular Engineering of Functional Materials, where she is engaged in data science and computational methods that predict and thence experimentally validate materials for photovoltaic, magnetic, and catalytic applications. She holds a joint appointment between the Physics Department (Cavendish Laboratory) and the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at Cambridge. She is 50% seconded by the ISIS neutron and muon facility, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK. Her research is highly interdisciplinary. Accordingly, she holds two Ph.D. degrees: one in physics from the University of Cambridge and one in chemistry from the University of Durham. She has received a number of awards and honours including the following: the Royal Society Clifford Patterson Medal and Lecture (2020), the 1851 Royal Commission 2014 Fellowship in Design (2015–18), a Fulbright Award (all disciplines Scholar, 2013–14), and an ICAM Senior Scientist Fellowship (2013–14) for the smart material design of dye-sensitized solar cells; The Vice-Chancellor’s Research Chair, University of New Brunswick, Canada (2008–2013); a Royal Society University Research Fellowship (2001–11); a Senior Research Fellowship (2002–2009) and Junior Research Fellowship (1999–2002) from St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, UK, for the development and application of in situ light-induced single-crystal X-ray diffraction; the Royal Society of Chemistry SAC Silver Medal and Lecture (2009) for her contributions to the development of photocrystallography and advanced methods in neutron diffraction; the Brian Mercer Feasibility Award (2007) for innovation in nanotechnology; the 18th Franco-British Science prize (2006) for collaborative research and cooperation between France and Britain; and the first British Crystallographic Association Chemical Crystallography Prize (2000) for her research on nonlinear optical materials. Before moving to Cambridge, she held a postdoctoral position in physics at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. Prior to this, she undertook a Ph.D. in chemistry through an international studentship between the Institut Laue Langevin, Grenoble, France, and Durham University. Her university studies began at Durham University where she graduated with first class honours in chemistry in 1994. In her spare time, she has also obtained a B.Sc. Hons. degree in mathematics (2000–4), a diploma in statistics (2004–5), a certificate in astronomy and planetary science (2006–7), a diploma in physics (2007–8), and a B.Eng. Hons. degree in engineering (2010–14) all through the Open University.

Olivier Boulle is a CNRS researcher in spintronics in Spintec, Grenoble, France. He did his phd thesis in the unité mixte de physique CNRS/Thales in Palaiseau, France and received his PhD degree in physics from University Paris 6 in 2007. He is an expert in nanomagnetism and magnetization dynamics induced by spin currents. His current research interest lies in magnetic topological spin textures, such as  magnetic skyrmions, and their manipulation using electrical current. He is currently the principal investigator of a project on topological excitations founded by the US research agency DARPA, as well as a young researcher French research agency ANR project on  magnetic skyrmions. He co-authored 48 publications in peer-reviewed journals as well as 3 international patents.

Prof. Johan Åkerman received his Ph.D. in Materials Physics from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in 2000. After a post-doc at University of California, San Diego, he joined Motorola, for four years, to be responsible for MRAM reliability. The MRAM technology he helped to launch remains the most commercially successfully MRAM to date. In 2005, he returned to Sweden to start his own research group at the Department of Materials and Nanophysics at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. In 2008 he was recruited as Full Professor to the Physics Department at University of Gothenburg, while remaining a Guest Professor at KTH. Prof. Åkerman has been working with spintronic technology for the last 20 years and has authored over 240 scientific papers, cited about 9500 times, and has given over 100 invited talks. He is also the founder and CEO of two start-up companies, NanOsc AB, commercializing spintronic devices, and NanOsc Instruments AB, designing and manufacturing spectrometers for ferromagnetic resonance measurements at cryogenic and room temperatures. His main projects are related to spin torque and spin Hall nano-oscillators, with particular focus on mutual synchronization, magnetodynamical solitons, and oscillator networks for neuromorphic computing.

Kerem Y. Camsari graduated in 2015 with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Purdue University and continued as a post-doctoral researcher with the Supriyo Datta group. His PhD established a “modular approach” to connect a growing set of materials and phenomena to circuits and systems, a framework that has also been adopted by others. In his own postdoctoral work, he used this approach to establish the concept of p-bits and p-circuits as a bridge between classical and quantum circuits.

Supriyo Bandyopadhyay is Commonwealth Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University where he directs the Quantum Device Laboratory. Research in the laboratory has been frequently featured in national and international media (newspapers, internet blogs, magazines, journals such as Nature and Nanotechnology, and internet news portals). The laboratory’s educational activities were featured in a pilot study conducted by the ASME. Prof. Bandyopadhyay was named Virginia’s Outstanding Scientist by Virginia’s Governor Terence R. McAuliffe in 2016. His alma mater, the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India named him a distinguished alumnus in 2016. His current employer Virginia Commonwealth University bestowed upon him the Distinguished Scholarship Award (given annually to one faculty member in the University) and the University Award of Excellence (the highest honor the University can bestow on a faculty member). His department gave him the Lifetime Achievement Award for sustained contributions to scholarship, education and service (one of two given in the department’s history). His earlier employer, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, conferred on him the College of Engineering Research Award (1998), the College of Engineering Service Award (2000) and the Interdisciplinary Research Award (2001) given jointly by the College of Engineering, the College of Science, and the Institute for Agricultural and Natural Resources. In 2018, he received the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award. This is the highest award for educators in private and public universities in the State of Virginia and recognizes outstanding scholarship, teaching and service. Prof. Bandyopadhyay has authored and co-authored over 400 research publications and presented over 150 invited talks and colloquia across four continents. He has also authored/co-authored three classic textbooks that have taught the field of spintronics and quantum device theory to students across the world. Prof. Bandyopadhyay is a Fellow of IEEE, APS, IoP, ECS and AAAS.

Albert Fert is Emeritus Professor at Université Paris-Sud and Scientific Director at the UMR CNRS/Thales laboratory he co-founded in 1995.

In 2007, Albert Fert and Peter Gruenberg received the Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of the Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR) in 1988. The GMR has led to important applications and, for example, has led to an increase of the capacity of information storage in the magnetic hard disks by a factor of about thousand. In addition, the discovery of GMR kicked off the development of a new type of electronics exploiting the spin of the electrons and called spintronic. Significant contributions to this development came from Fert’s team.

In the recent years, Albert Fert has been one of the pioneers of the research in the new field of the magnetic skyrmions. His research today is mainly on skyrmions and on spintronic phenomena exploiting topology and spin-orbit interactions in low dimension systems (from topological insulators to Rashba bi-dimensional electron gas).