Prize Recipient

Jagadeesh Moodera
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"To Robert Meservey, Terunobu Miyazaki, Jagadeesh Moodera and Paul Tedrow for pioneering work in the field of spin-dependent tunneling and for the application of these phenomena to the field of magnetoelectronics."

Jagadeesh S. Moodera, who was born in India, came to USA in 1979. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from Mysore University and a Ph.D. in Physics from Indian Institute of Technology (Chennai), India. As a postdoctoral fellow in West Virginia University with Prof. Mohinder Seehra, he explored magnetic properties of MnO crystals. In 1981, he joined Francis Bitter Magnet Lab as a scientist in the group of Dr. Robert Meservey to engage in spin polarized tunneling research; proximity effects between normal metals and superconductors and ferromagnets, developing ways of detecting magnetic moments and onset of ferromagnetism in ultra thin films. Work on spin filter tunneling through ferromagnetic semiconductor barriers followed this. When Dr. Meservey retired in the early nineties, Moodera continued as the group leader with research projects supported by NSF, ONR and other sources involving students at all levels. He developed collaborations with HP Labs and TDK, universities in US, Netherlands, Germany, France and Korea. Along with his team he successfully observed room temperature ferromagnet-insulator-ferromagnet tunneling in 1994. His current research interest includes spin transport in superconductors, semiconductors; spin filtering, MTJs, and MgB2 superconductors. Dr. Moodera is also a visiting professor at Technical University of Eindhoven (The Netherlands), Fellow of the American Physical Society, recipient of the IBM (1995-97) and TDK (1999-2000) Research Awards. He was elected chairman of the Gordon Research Conference on Magnetic Nanostructures, executive member of GMAG of APS. Recently, he was selected as American Competitiveness and Innovation Fellow by National Science Foundation with the citation: For his achievements and world-leading role in the field of spintronics and his dedication to diversity while educating the next generation of scientific and technological leaders of the world.

 Gregory Boebinger (Chair), Kathy Levin, Mildred Dresselhaus, David Awschalom, Leo Radzihovsky