Mark received his PhD in Physics from The Pennsylvania State University for the study of ultrathin magnetic films.  He was awarded an NRC Postdoc at NIST to study GMR materials and then an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama in Physics and the MINT Center.  He moved to Seagate Technology working on the development of Hard Disk Drive ((HDD) recording heads. At Seagate he has held positions of Manager for the Advanced Materials group, Director for Advanced Reader Development Group where his team helped developed the first TMR reader for HDD volume production.  He is currently a Technologist in Seagate’s Advanced Transducer Development group and also directs Seagate’s External Research program.  He has served as Chair of the Advanced Storage Research Consortium (ASRC) US Technical Committee for over 5 years (http://asrc.idema.org/) and recently helped produce the ASRC Reader Roadmap and HDD Technology Roadmap.

Mark has been active in the IEEE Magnetic Society including serving as Treasurer for TMRC, Intermag and General Chair for TMRC.  He has served as the Finance Chair since 2019.  Mark has over 50 US patents, over 65 publications, received Seagate’s Technical Innovators Award and a 4-time recipient of Seagate’s Inventors Hall of Fame Award.  He is an IEEE Senior Member.