Center for Magnetic Recording Research

CMRR Seminar                                                              

CMRR will host a lecture by Dr. Neal Bertram on September 8, 2009 at 4:00 pm at the CMRR Auditorium. Dr. Bertram's talk is entitled "A Model for Noise Power versus Density in a Perpendicular Digital Magnetic Recording System ." 
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2009 Albert Sauveur Achievement Award

Dr. Sungho Jin, FASM, Distinguished Professor, Department of Mechanical
and Aerospace Engineering, and the Center for Magnetic Recording Research, University of California at San Diego, will receive this year's award for "pioneering research for discovery of new materials and phenomena in the fields of electronic, magnetic and superconducting materials." This award was established in 1934. It recognizes pioneering materials science and engineering achievements that have stimulated organized work along similar lines to such an extent that a marked basic advance has been made in the knowledge of materials. Complete Story

Flash Memory Summit

CMRR will exhibit in booth 109 at the Flash Memory Summit held at the Santa Clara Convention on August 11-13, 2009. CMRR graduate student Eitan Yaakobi will present a paper entitled "Error Correction Coding for Flash Memories."  Flyer

Students can register for the Flash Memory Summit at a discounted rate, by using the code “SPGP” to register as a sponsor-attendee. Complete Information    

IEEE Distinguished Lecture                                        

CMRR will host a lecture by Dr. Michael Mallary on July 23, 2009 at 4:00 pm. in the CMRR Auditorium. Dr. Mallary's talk is entitled " The Evolution and Revolutions in Disk Drive Recording." Complete Information

IEEE Distinguished Lecture 

CMRR will host a lecture by Dr. Theo Rasing on June 3rd 2009 at the CMRR Auditorium. Dr. Rasing's talk is entitled "Controlling Magnetism with Light ." 
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IEEE Distinguished Lecture

CMRR will host a lecture by Dr. Kannan Krishnan on June 1st 2009 at the CMRR Auditorium. Dr. Krishnan's talk is entitled "Biomedical Nano Magnetics: A Spin Through New Possibilities." Complete Information

MAE Distinguished Lecture - CMRR Professor Frank Talke           

Frank E. Talke, an Endowed Chaired Professor at CMRR will deliver the 2009 Distinguished Lecture for the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at the Powell - Focht Bioengineering Hall - Fung Auditorium. His lecture is entitled "Nano-Technology in Present and Future Hard Disk Drives." Complete information

CMRR Students Selected as Young Marconi Scholars

CMRR graduate student Eitan Yaakobi and CMRR visiting graduate student Marco Papaleo have been selected as Marconi Scholars for 2009 by the Marconi Society. The honor includes a $4,000 cash prize, which will be presented at the Marconi Society Award Dinner in Bologna, Italy, on October 9, 2009. The prize also includes $1,000 to help defray travel expenses to the event. 

Eitan Yaakobi

The event includes two days of symposia. October 8th includes a historical focus, and presentations by the Young Scholars. October 9th will include presentations by former Marconi Fellows, this year's winners, and culminates with the Gala Award Dinner.       Complete Story     

Marco Papaleo

Schultz Prize Awarded

On May 10th, 2009, the Schultz Prize was awarded to Zheng Wu, a student co-advised by CMRR Professors Paul Siegel and Jack Wolf. The prize is presented in recognition of CMRR graduate students who have distinguished themselves through the creativity of their research and the impact of their publications.  Complete Story

Shannon Memorial Fellowship Awarded                            

Yuzhe Jin, a Ph.D. student of ECE Professor Bhaskar Rao, is the recipient of the 2009-2010 Shannon Memorial Fellowship. The purpose of this endowed fellowship is to honor an outstanding graduate student at UCSD whose research is in the field of information theory.

Mr. Jin came to UCSD in the fall of 2005 from Tsinghua University where he obtained a Bachelors degree.

His current work involves the interface between network information theory and sparse signal recovery problems that arise in compressed sensing and other applications.

7th Annual Shannon Memorial Lecture - April 21, 2009

Reception: 2:30 pm at the Center for Magnetic Recording Research
Lecture: 4:00 pm at the Calit2 auditorium - Atkinson Hall

Speaker: Professor Robert M. Gray, Stanford University

Title: Shannon Source Coding, Ornstein Isomorphism, and Random Process Models

Poster

Abstract

Biography

CMRR Short Course                                                   

H. Neal Bertram
Professor Emeritus
Electrical and Computer Engineering, and
Center for Magnetic Recording Research
University of California-San Diego

We wish to understand design criteria for high density recording systems: e.g. 500Gbits/in2 at 1GHz with 10-6 BER stable to 10 years. What are the essential characteristics of the medium and the write and read transducers to achieve this goal?

This course will focus on understanding essentials of magnetic recording leading to such design goals. The course begins with basic material design and nature of the medium and transducers of a digital drive. At the end design criteria will be presented based on the earlier fundamentals.

PART II: Write Process, Medium Noise, SNR and BER, System Density Limitations April 13, 15, 17, 2009 (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) 9:00 – 11:00 AM To reserve a seat and a copy the material please send your full name and email address to bmanoulian@ucsd.edu by Friday, April 8, 2009. Course PDF

Young Engineer of the Year

Dr. Kai-Zhong Gao, a CMRR graduate, was recently named the 2009 Minnesota Young Engineer of the Year by the Minnesota Federation of Engineering, Science and Technology Societies. Kai-Zhong is currently a Senior Engineer and Manager at the Seagate R & D facility in Bloomington, MN. Complete Story

Left to Right: Gary Jin & Kaizhong Gao

CMRR Short Course                                                              

CMRR Professor Emeritus H. Neal Bertram will be teaching a short course entitled "Introduction to Magnetic Materials and Magnetic Recording." Part I of the course will be held at the CMRR Auditorium on February 23, 25, & 26, 2009. Part II of the course will be held on April 13, 15, 17, 2009 at CMRR. Course Announcement    

 Course PDF

Frank E. Talke, an Endowed Chaired Professor at CMRR has been inducted into
the Academy der Technikwissenschaften (Acatech). The Academy is the equivalent
of the National Academy of Engineering in the United States. Members are nominated and voted on by all 296 members of the Acatech.

The Acatech brings together the best minds in science and business. The members are admitted into the organization based on their outstanding scientific achievements and excellent reputation. Since Acatech handles a broad spectrum of interdisciplinary issues in science and technology, members stem from the engineering and natural sciences, the humanities and the social sciences.

Professor Talke will be officially inducted into Acatech in March 2009.

CMRR 25th anniversary celebration 

Nate Heintzman was appointed as the new Associate Director at the Center for Magnetic Recording Research under the UC Discovery Fellow Program. Nate will manage diverse programs within the Center that focus on facilitating collaborative information technology ventures between CMRR scientists and industry affiliates in the San Diego area and beyond. He will perform similar duties at UCSD's Center for Wireless Communications (CWC). Nate received his Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences at UCSD, has consulted for various companies in the science community, and serves as the Vice President of Operations and Chief Academic Advisor for Insulindependence, a non-profit diabetes advocacy organization. More information is available at http://www.mysdscience.com/profile/Nate

Two CMRR graduates, Henry Pfister and Joseph Soriaga, have received a “2007 Best Paper Award” from the Data Storage Technical Committee of the IEEE Communications Society. The paper entitled “Determining and Approaching Achievable Rates of Binary Intersymbol Interference Channels Using Multistage Decoding,” was published in the April 2007 issue of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory and was coauthored with Professor Paul H. Siegel.

Ralf Brunner, a graduate student in Professor Talke’s lab has received the UCSD MAE award for “2008 Outstanding Graduate Student.” He has been recognized as a dedicated researcher in his field.

Hao Zheng, a graduate student in Professor Talke’s lab received the “2008 ASME/ISPS Best Conference Paper.” The paper entitled “Effect of Suspension Design on the Non-Operational Shock Response in a Load/Unload Hard Disk Drive” was coauthored with A.N. Murthy, E.B. Fanslau Jr., and Professor F.E. Talke.

INSIC’s thirteenth annual Leadership Achievement and Technical Achievement Awards were presented at the 2008 INSIC Annual Meeting in San Diego, California, on August 13th, 2008.

INSIC’s Technical Achievement Award, which recognizes the contributor of a specific technical achievement in an INSIC Research Program, for a contribution judged to provide a significant advancement toward the Program’s goals, was presented to Dr. Frederick E. Spada, University of California San Diego, Center for Magnetic Recording Research (UCSD CMRR). Dr. Spada has been engaged in a meticulous investigation over an extended period of the possible erosion, corrosion and deposition of materials in magnetic tape recording heads which may result from electrochemical processes at the head-tape interface during tape motion. His research has identified conditions under which material deposition will occur on the critical areas of the head near the poles and gap. Dr. Spada’s methodology has been actively peeling away the layers of this very complex problem. His work has clearly demonstrated the following important findings:

• The role of the tape’s fatty acid ester lubricants in material transport and deposition.

• The role of head material composition in the wear and deposition processes.

• The very dramatic change in the operational chemistry of material removal from the metal elements in recording head structures and the re-deposition on the substrates, as a function of humidity and Galvanic current path.

• The importance of electrochemical effects on material migration (both corrosion and deposition) in head structures.

CMRR Professor Frank E. Talke has been awarded the 2008 ASME Medal.  The ASME Medal, established in 1929, is the highest award that the Society can bestow and is to recognize “eminently distinguished engineering achievement.” Only one ASME Medal may be awarded annually. Although some individuals have been honored by both the ASME Medal and Honorary Membership, each award has been made on the basis of different Accomplishments.

6th Annual Shannon Memorial Lecture

Speaker: Professor Sergio Verdu from Princeton University

Title: Information theory and Minimum Mean-Square Estimation

Reception: 2:30pm at the Center for Magnetic Recording Research Lecture: 4:00pm at the Calit2 auditorium

Abstract:In this talk Prof. Sergio will survey his work on the interactions between information theory and estimation theory. In particular, he will show how to express any information measure as a function of
the minimum mean-square error achievable when observing a random variable in Gaussian noise. These relationships lead to surprising applications, including a new universal relationship in continuous-time nonlinear filtering, the optimization of the input power spectrum in DSL lines, and the simplest proof of the entropy-power inequality

Biography:Sergio Verdú has been on the Faculty of Princeton University since 1984. He teaches and conducts research in the Department of Electrical Engineering of the School of Engineering and Applied Science. A member of the Information Sciences and Systems group and the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics, his research interests are in Information Theory, Data Compression and Transmission, and Signal Processing.

A native of Barcelona, Spain, Sergio Verdú received the Telecommunications Engineering degree from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, in 1980 and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1984. Conducted at the Coordinated Science Laboratory of the University of Illinois, his doctoral research pioneered the field of Multiuser Detection.

Sergio Verdú was elected Fellow of the IEEE in 1992 and member of the U. S. National Academy of Engineering in 2007. He received the 2000 Frederick E. Terman Award from the American Society for Engineering Education, and the IEEE Third Millennium Medal in 2000. In 2005, he received a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. He is the recipient of the 2007 Claude E. Shannon Award, and the 2008 IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal.

In 1998, Cambridge University Press published his book Multiuser Detection. His papers have received several awards: the 1992 IEEE Donald Fink Paper Award, the 1998 Information Theory Outstanding Paper Award, a IEEE Information Theory Golden Jubilee Paper Award, the 2000 Paper Award from the Japan Telecommunications Advancement Foundation, the 2002 Leonard G. Abraham Prize Award in the field of Communications Systems and the 2007 IEEE Joint Communications/Information Theory Paper Award.

Sergio Verdú has served as Associate Editor of the IEEE Trans. on Automatic Control, and as Associate Editor for Shannon Theory of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. He served as President of the IEEE Information Theory Society in 1997. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Foundations and Trends in Communications and Information Theory.

He has held visiting appointments at the Australian National University, the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, and the University of Tokyo. In 1998 he was Visiting Professor at the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department of the University of California, Berkeley, and in 2002 he held the Hewlett-Packard Visiting Research Professorship at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, Berkeley. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Telefónica I+D.

CMRR Seminar: April 29, 2008, at 4:00pm, CMRR Auditorium

Speaker: Jordan A. Katine

Title: Materials and Processing Techniques in Magnetic Nanofabrication

Abstract: The ability to fabricate nanoscale devices has opened up exciting new areas of research in magnetism such as the spin torque effect.  Unfortunately for scientists interested in this field, there is a scarcity of publications that explain how these nanoscale magnetic devices are built.  In this talk, I will present an overview of magnetic device nanofabrication, using specific examples such as current-perpendicular-to-the-plane (CPP) GMR nanopillars, to highlight the techniques that are used to create these structures.

Biography: Jordan Katine received his Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University where he researched quantum interference phenomena in GaAs/AlGaAs quantum dots.  He moved to Cornell for post-doctoral work in Bob Buhrman’s laboratory, where he studied electronic transport in nanostructured magnetic multilayer devices, which included measurements of the spin torque effect.  In 1999 Jordan moved to the IBM Almaden Research Center.  Since moving to IBM, and subsequently to Hitachi, Jordan has continued his research in nanoscale devices, including magnetic recording heads.

CMRR Seminar: April 10, 2008 at 4:00pm, CMRR Auditorium

Speaker: Warren Gross, McGill University

Title: Stochastic Decoding of LDPC Codes

Abstract: Stochastic decoding is a new approach to iterative decoding of error-correcting codes. Stochastic decoding of practical Low-Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes has recently been shown to be able to provide near-optimal decoding performance with respect to the Sum-Product Algorithm. In this approach, information is represented by the statistics of bit streams, resulting in simple, high-speed hardware implementation of graph-based decoding algorithms. This talk provides a survey of stochastic methods for graph-based iterative decoding and the state-of-the-art in stochastic decoder hardware implementations.

Biography: Warren J. Gross is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at McGill University. His research interests are in the design and application of signal processing microsystems and custom computer architectures. He received the PhD degree from the University of Toronto in 2003. In the summers of 2004 and 2005, he was a Visiting Professor at the Université de Bretagne-Sud. Lorient, France. He served as the General Chair of the 6th Analog Decoding Workshop. He is a member of the Design and Implementation of Signal Processing Systems Technical Committee of the IEEE Signal Processing Society and served on the program committees of the IEEE Workshop on Signal Processing Systems, the IEEE Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines and the International Conference on Field-Programmable Logic and Applications. Dr. Gross is a member of the IEEE and a licensed Professional Engineer in the Province of Ontario.

CMRR Seminar: April 1, 2008 at 4:00pm, CMRR Auditorium

Speaker: Thomas M. Coughlin

Title: Storing Your Life: Consumer Digital Storage - Personal, Hierarchical and Virtual

Abstract: This presentation discusses different mobile and static usage models for digital storage in consumer devices.  These models define storage hierarchies that are useful for analyzing the proper digital storage technology for a consumer electronics application. Important characteristics of consumer storage devices are shown and guidelines are given for how digital storage should be designed in consumer devices. Demand for higher resolution content and for capturing ever greater details of the life of family members will drive increases in commercial as well as personal content storage demand. Sharing of content within a home or over the Internet creates much greater demand for storage since a shared file can be multiplied many times through network sharing.   Ultimately this content must be indexed, protected, managed and the physical complexity of the storage devices must be hidden to the user by home storage virtualization

Biography: Dr. Coughlin is the Founder and President of Coughlin Associates. Tom has over 30 years of experience in the data storage industry as a working engineer and high level technical manager. In addition to regular technical and management consulting projects he is the publisher of reports on digital storage in consumer electronics as a content creation and distribution. He is the author of the recently published Digital Storage in Consumer Electronics: The Essential Guide from Newnes (a division of Elsevier). Tom has many published reports and articles on digital storage and its applications. He has 6 patents on magnetic recording and related technologies. Tom is the founder and organizer of the annual Storage Visions Conference, a partner to the International CES. Tom is a senior member and was 2007 chairman of the Santa Clara Valley IEEE Section and San Francisco Bay Area Council and was chairman of the Santa Clara Valley IEEE Consumer Electronics Society in 2006 and past chairman of the SCV IEEE Magnetics Society more than once. Tom is a member of the IEEE CE Society Adcom. He is also a member of APS, AVS, IDEMA, SNIA, AAAS, TCG and SMPTE.
Tom received a B.S. in Physics and an M.S.E.E. from the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis) and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Shinshu University in Nagano, Japan

Sungho Jin, Distinguished Professor of Materials Science, has been selected as Fellow of the MRS (Materials Research Society) for pioneering research on magnetic, superconducting, environmental, nano and bio materials, and for significant publications, patents and industrial applications. The title of MRS Fellow honors scientists who are notable for their distinguished research accomplishments and their outstanding contributions to the advancement of materials research, world-wide. The inaugural class of Fellows will be recognized at the 2008 MRS Spring Meeting, March 24-28, in San Francisco.

CMRR Seminar: February 27, 2008 at 4:00pm, CMRR Auditorium

Speaker: Zsigmond Nagy

Title: Efficient Coding and a Capacity Lower Bound for the Square-1 Constraint

Abstract: Binary constrained codes in 1 and 2 dimensions are used in magnetic and optical recording devices and have been studied extensively. A key property associated with each constraint is its capacity, which is an asymptotically tight upper bound on the average number of information bits that can be stored per position by any code that satisfies the constraint.

Since the capacity of 2-dimensional constraints is not known in general, it is of great interest to calculate numerical capacity upper and lower bounds for 2-dimensional constraints. Furthermore, efficient encoding algorithms that achieve an encoding rate close to the capacity are important in practical applications. We present a new bit stuffing-type encoder for the binary Square-1 constraint (no two 1s appear on neighboring positions horizontally, vertically, or diagonally in the 2-dimensional plane), and show that its encoding rate is R=0.415681, which improves on the previously known capacity lower bounds for the Square-1 constraint.

CMRR Seminar: February 19, 2008, at 4:00pm, CMRR Auditorium

Speaker: Kannan M. Krishnan – University of Washington

Title: Spins, Bytes and Cures: Materials, Devices and Biomedical Nanomagnetics

Abstract: There is a resurgence of interest in magnetic materials on the nanometer length scale largely driven by new synthesis and characterization capabilities as well as potential applications in information storage, spintronics and biomedical applications.  Size-dependent scaling laws, exchange, proximity and interface effects and studies of spin transport are increasingly of fundamental and technological interest.
Following a brief outlook on nanotechnology and an overview [1] of our research, I will present highlights of our work in dilute magnetic semiconductors [2,3] and exchange-biased thin film heterostructures [4,5].  The rest of the talk will focus on biomedical nanomagnetics using functionalized nanoparticles emphasizing their synthesis [6,7,8], morphology [9,10], surface functionalization [11,12] self-organization [13], inter-particle interactions [14], cytotoxicity and biomedical applications [15,16] including therapy, imaging and diagnostics.
Our work is supported by NSF/dmr, NSF/ecs, NSF/imr, NIH/ninds, DoE/bes and the Campbell, Murdock and Guggenheim Foundations

CMRR Professor Paul Siegel – a leading authority on coding for hard disk magnetic recording systems – has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering “for the invention and development of advanced coding techniques for digital recording systems.” See complete article.

CMRR Seminar - January 8, 2008, at 4:00pm, CMRR Auditorium.

Speaker: Dr. Ori Shental

Title: Gaussian Belief Propagation for Solving Systems of Linear Equations: Theory and Application

Abstract: The canonical linear-algebraic problem of solving a system of linear equations arises in numerous contexts in the mathematical sciences and engineering. In this talk, we introduce an efficient Gaussian belief propagation (GaBP) solver that does not involve direct matrix inversion. The iterative nature of our approach allows for a distributed message-passing implementation of the solution algorithm. We discuss the properties of the GaBP solver, including convergence, exactness, computational complexity, message-passing efficiency and its relation to classical solution methods. The attractiveness of the proposed solver, in comparison to conventional iterative solution methods, is demonstrated using numerical examples and applications, like linear detection.

The talk is based on a joint work with Prof. Jack K. Wolf, Prof. Paul H. Siegel, Prof. Danny Dolev (HUJI) and Mr. Danny Bickson (HUJI)

Paul H. Siegel, - On August 21, 2007 a reception was held at CMRR in honor of CMRR Director Paul H. Siegel who was awarded an Endowed Professorship at UCSD.

Frieder Sieble, Dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering, began the proceedings by explaining what a great honor it is to be awarded an endowed chair at UCSD.  He also spoke of Paul’s many achievements in research, teaching and service. The program continued with remarks by Larry Larson (ECE Chairman), Eric Fullerton, Larry Milstein, Jack Wolf, Gordon Hughes, Ami Berkowitz, James Lemke (founder of CMRR), and former students Joseph Soriaga and Jilei Hou.  Professor Wolf also read a congratulatory letter from Neal Bertram who could not attend.  Paul Siegel ended the formal proceedings with a heart warming “thank you.”

Jack Keil Wolf, the Stephen O. Rice Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UCSD and CMRR Endowed Chair has been selected to receive the 2007 Aaron Wyner Distinguished Service Award from the Information Theory (IT) Society. This award recognizes his many years of inspiring leadership and service to the IT Society.

Frank Talke, an Endowed Chaired Professor at CMRR has been awarded the Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. This award is one of the most prestigious awards in German academia and based primarily on the scientist's/scholar's entire academic record. In addition, awardees are invited to conduct an original research project of their own design in close collaboration with colleagues in Germany over a period of six to twelve months.