Stuart Parkin has been named winner of the 2014 Millennium Technology prize – a € 1 million award highlighting innovations that have made a positive impact on society and are stimulating further cutting edge research and development. The prize recognizes Parkin’s contribution to the translation of the giant magnetoresistance effect from the discovery that won Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg the Nobel prize for Physics (in 2007) into a technology platform for high-capacity magnetic disk drives.

Atomically engineered materials
Parkin’s work on thin magnetic films has enabled disk-drive makers to configure read-heads that can detect much smaller regions of digital information, and has allowed developers to increase storage capacity as a result.

His win has been celebrated across the web. Coverage includes stories on the BBC and Wired, but fans of materials translation will probably enjoy Parkin’s interview with The Guardian most of all –

“I showed that you didn’t need these very exotic techniques but one could actually [use] a much simpler technique which was compatible with mass manufacturing,” he told the news organization.

Speaking via a video link on the day of the announcement, Parkin said that future plans for his research team include developing computing architectures that would allow much more energy-efficient processing of information.

Stuart Parkin is a fellow of The Institute of Physics and a founding editorial board member of TMR+’s sister journal Translational Materials Research.

Useful links –
The spin on electronics (online lecture given by Stuart Parkin, Nov 2013)