Archives: Presenters

Franca Albertini is a research director at the Italian National Research Council (CNR) and leader of the Magnetic and Multiferroic Materials Group at the Institute of Materials for Electronics and Magnetism (IMEM). Her main interests are in magnetic and multifunctional properties of bulk and nanoscale materials for energy and bio-medicine applications. Her current activity is mainly focused on the understanding and tuning the multifunctional properties of magnetic shape memory Heusler compounds.

She has been chair of international conferences (Joint European Magnetic Symposia JEMS2012, IEEE-Advances in Magnetics 2020-21) and program chair of conferences (JEMS2016) and symposia of international conferences (e.g. MRS, CIMTEC, JEMS, ICM).  She has been the president of the Italian Magnetism Association (2017-2021) and has served different scientific societies (e.g.  IEEE-Magnetics, European Magnetic Association, European Physical Society).

Her scientific activity has gone hand in hand with her interests in gender and science studies and science communication. She has taken part in the activities of the Italian Women and Science Association (Associazione Donne e Scienza) since its foundation and is presently a member of the board of the association.

Areas of expertise include synthesis, structure, experimental thermodynamics, physical, and chemical properties of intermetallic compounds containing rare-earth metals; anomalous behavior of 4f-electron systems; magnetostructural phase transformations; physical properties of ultra-pure rare earth metals; caloric materials and systems; mechanochemistry, mechanically induced solid-state reactions, and mechanochemical transformations; and relationships between composition, structure, physical and chemical properties of materials.

Vitalij Pecharsky is an Anson Marston Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Iowa State University and a faculty scientist, group leader and PI at Ames Laboratory. He leads a DOE-BES program on “Extraordinary responsive magnetic rare earth materials,” and a number of applied science projects. The latter include “High power density magnetocaloric and elastocaloric systems” supported jointly by the Advanced Manufacturing and Building Technologies Offices of DOE-EERE, and “SmFeN as a cost-effective high performance magnet,” ”Deployable rare earth metallization (DREM) methods,“ and “Mechanochemical extraction of lithium at low temperature (MELLT) from chemical-grade domestic α-spodumenes,” all within the Critical Materials Institute – a U.S. DOE Energy Innovation Hub.

He also serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Alloys and Compounds, and together with Professor Jean-Claude Bunzli co-edits the Handbook on the Physics and Chemistry of Rare Earths.

Vitalij has doctorate in inorganic chemistry and a bachelor’s and master’s in chemistry (with distinction), all from Ivan Franko National University of L’viv, formerly L’viv State University in Ukraine.

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.

Laura H. Greene is the Chief Scientist of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and the Marie Krafft Professor of Physics at Florida State University. Her research is on quantum materials, focusing on fundamental studies of novel materials growth and the mechanisms of unconventional superconductivity. As a leading advocate for diversity in science, a champion for women in science and engineering, science diplomacy, ethics, and human rights, she has held leadership roles in many science organizations nationally and internationally, including president of the American Physical Society (APS), the Board of Directors for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and is presently the Vice President of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) for Ethics and Outreach. President Joe Biden recently appointed Greene to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) which directly advises POTUS on matters of science, technology, and innovation policy. Greene is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a fellow of the Institute of Physics (U.K.), the AAAS, and the APS. She has been a Guggenheim Fellow, was awarded the E.O. Lawrence Award for Materials Research from the U.S. Department of Energy, the APS Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award, and the Bellcore Award of Excellence. She has co-authored over 200 publications and presented nearly 700 invited talks.

Full professor at the Faculty of Applied Sciences at Delft University of Technology and head of the section Fundamental Aspects of Materials and Energy. Employing microscopic and macroscopic techniques, my main research interest is in materials for renewable energy and energy saving (MCE, Li-ion batteries, H storage, solar cells, self-healing materials, catalysts). In this work in-situ, neutron scattering, X-ray diffraction, positron annihilation and Mössbauer spectroscopy play an important role.

My major scientific effort and scholarly contribution of the past 20 years is to establish magnetocaloric material as a new, sustainability-oriented discipline. I am recognized as leading expert in this field. Before being appointed in Delft I worked as Postdoc at Stanford, University of Amsterdam and Federal University of Santa Catharina (Brazil).

Overall, I have published more than 480 papers with more than 14600 citations (ISI); generated 14 patents. My h-index is 46. I am the editor of the Handbook of Magnetic Materials, co-editor for 3 journals, co-organized the Intermag Conference in Amsterdam and initiated the recurring Delft Days on Magnetocalorics.

Bryan Gaensler is the Director of the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, a Professor in the David A. Dunlap Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and a Canada Research Chair in Radio Astronomy. He received his PhD from the University of Sydney in 1999, and subsequently held positions at MIT, the Smithsonian, Harvard, and the University of Sydney, before joining the University of Toronto in 2015. He has served as the Canadian Science Director for the Square Kilometre Array and as the co-chair of the Canadian Astronomy Long Range Plan 2020-2030, and is the co-chair of the Toronto Initiative for Diversity and Excellence (TIDE). Gaensler has published more than 400 research papers on cosmic magnetism, interstellar gas and cosmic explosions, while his best-selling popular astronomy book “Extreme Cosmos” has been translated into five languages. Gaensler is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and a former Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, and gave the 2001 Australia Day Address to the nation. His research has been recognised by the American Astronomical Society (Pierce Prize), Australian Academy of Science (Pawsey Medal), and Canadian Astronomical Society (Martin Award), and has twice (2005, 2020) been named as one of Science magazine’s “Breakthroughs of the Year”.

Roger is the John L Loeb Associate Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University.  You will usually find him working on the most ancient rocks he can find using newly developed magnetic field sensors.  He joined the faculty at Harvard in 2017 after a PhD at MIT.

• Engineer in Physics, Universidad de Santiago 2008
• Doctor in Science, Physics, Universidad de Santiago, 2012.
• Researcher of the Center for the development of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, since 2016.
• Full professor, Universidad Central de Chile, since 2016.
• Expertise in magnetic nanostructures and its characterization (www.nanosintesis.cl)

Qiming Shao is an assistant professor in the departments of Electronic and Computer Engineering and Physics (by courtesy) at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He received his Bachelors degree from Tsinghua University and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). His spintronic quantum material laboratory (SQML) aims to realize energy and time-efficient hardware for physical and quantum intelligence. His research interests are novel electronic and spintronic materials and structures for memory, neuromorphic and quantum computing applications. His research works are published in top peer-reviewed journals and conferences, including Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Electronics, Nature Communications, Nano Letters, and International Electron Device Meeting. He is a recipient of IEEE Magnetics Society’s 2022 Early Career Award, UCLA 2018-2019 Dissertation Year Fellowship, Distinguished PhD Dissertation Award, 2019 Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-Financed Students Abroad, and two Best Poster Awards at the 2018 International Conference on Magnetism. He was the chair of the IEEE Hong Kong Joint Chapter of Electron Devices and Solid-State Circuits from 2020 to 2021. He is now the Treasurer of the IEEE Hong Kong Magnetics Chapter.

Dr. H. Sepehri-Amin is a principal researcher at National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) and Associate Professor at University of Tsukuba, Japan. He received his Ph. D. in 2011 from University of Tsukuba. His research interest is design and development of high-performance magnetic materials for green energy conversions and data storage applications. This includes permanent magnets, soft magnetic materials, magnetocaloric materials, and energy assisted recording media. He received a number of awards for his research, such as German Innovation Award (Gottfried Wagener Prize), Honda memorial young researcher award, Magnetic Society of Japan outstanding research award, Japan Institute of Metals young researcher award.