Dr. Jagadeesh Moodera

Moodera is performing studies of ferromagnetic thin films, semi-conducting thin films and a special class ferromagnets known as half-metallic ferromagnets (HMF) which, according to band structure calculations, have an energy gap in the minority spin band at the Fermi energy. He received the 1995 IBM Research Partnership Award for his work in fabricating a "spin-dependent tunnel junction device" whose feasibility was first predicted by researchers about 25 years ago. Its primary uses are in magnetic read-heads and as magnetic random- access memory in computers, but it also has applications as sensors in devices ranging from automobiles to medical diagnostic tools.

Dr. Moodera is the group leader in Thin Film Magnetism, Superconductivity, Tunneling and Nano Spintronics at the Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory. He is working on a technique that he and some major foundations believe have big potential for quantum computing.