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  • Prize for the Industrial Application of Physics

Prize for Industrial Applications of Physics

The Prize for Industrial Applications of Physics recognizes outstanding contributions by an individual or individuals to the industrial applications of physics.  The American Institute of Physics Corporate Associates and the American Physical Society (APS) alternate in co-sponsoring this $10,000 award with General Motors.  Where the AIP award recognizes scientists who have developed proven technologies, the APS award recognizes research that has excellent potential for future success.

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2012 Winner

Eric Fullerton - University of California, San Diego

Eric Fullerton received his B.Sc. in physics from Harvey Mudd College in 1984 and his Ph.D. in physics from University of California, San Diego in 1991 where he worked on the growth and characterization of metallic superlattices. He joined the magnetic films group in the Materials Science Division at Argonne National
Laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow and in 1993 became a staff scientist specializing in the physics of coupled magnetic films.

In 1997 he joined the IBM Almaden Research Center where he worked as a Research Staff Member until 2003, when he moved to Hitachi Global Storage Technologies as a Research Staff Member and Manager of the Fundamentals of Nanostructured Materials Group. At IBM and HGST, his research focused on exchange-coupled magnetic recording media for high density magnetic recording.

In 2007 he joined the University of California, San Diego as a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Nano- Engineering. He is also the holder of an endowed chair and is Director of the Center of Magnetic Recording Research. Eric has co-authored more than 240 papers in refereed journals and holds 50 US patents including a patent selected as one of the"Five Patents to Watch" in 2001 by MIT's Technology Review magazine. He has been awarded the Argonne Exceptional Performance Award in 1996, Fellowship in the American Physical Society in 1998, the IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award in 2002, the IBM Fourth Plateau Invention Achievement Award in 2003, the Hitachi GST Gold Patent Award in 2004 and 2005, Docteur Honoris Causa from Université Henri Poincaré, Nancy France, in 2011 and Fellowship in the IEEE in 2012.