Professor Dr. Stuart Parkin of the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, USA has received the 2012 Von Hippel Award from the Materials Research Society (MRS) for his outstanding contributions to interdisciplinary materials research. The British-American experimental physicist and member of the Gutenberg Research College at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), was on hand to receive the award at the MRS Fall Meeting on November 28 in Boston. The annual award includes US-$ 10,000.00 in prize money. It is the American society's highest honor.
Stuart Parkin works in the field of spintronics, both in advancing scientific understanding and in technological applications, a field in which Parkin and his research team have contributed many significant discoveries and developments. According to the MRS, Parkin received the Von Hippel Award for his "seminal contributions to research and technology in spintronic materials."
Parkin is an IBM Fellow, the highest technical accolade from IBM, and managing director of the Magnetoelectronics group at the IBM Almaden Research Center. He is also a consulting professor at Stanford University. Stuart Parkin was awarded the Gutenberg Research Award from the Graduate School of Excellence "Materials Science in Mainz" (MAINZ) in 2008. He has collaborated closely since then with scientists and doctoral students in Mainz. In May 2011, he was named a fellow by the Gutenberg Research College in order to strengthen this collaboration.