Stuart Parkin is the first ‘distinguished professor’ of the TU/e, an international top professor to be appointed to this position for four years. He has (co-)authored more than 350 scientific articles and has more than 50 patents to his name.

Distinguished professors spend one week at the TU/e annually, when they present lectures to the scientific staff, PhD candidates and selected Master students. In addition, they are available for consultations with staff members about important developments within their area of expertise. In this way the TU/e is demonstrating that it wants to be an international meeting place for the best researchers.

The field of spintronics is critical in enabling new developments in hard disks and magnetic RAM memory, for instance. The read heads of modern hard disks would not function properly without the giant magnetoresistive effect (GMR) that occurs in certain layered magnetic structures. Parkin’s research into these structures, which has opened up new horizons, has been essential for the application of the technology. In addition, his ground-breaking activities in the field of magnetic tunnel junctions have contributed to the development of magnetic random access memory (MRAM), a permanent and energy-efficient memory.

At present Parkin is studying the manipulation of magnetic domains by means of spin-polarized flows. He expects that there will be applications for this in a memory device that he himself has patented, the Magnetic Racetrack memory./.