Mark Kryder

Mark Kryder is University Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, where he founded the Magnetics Technology Center and the Data Storage Systems Center.

Kryder’s research has been predominantly in the area of magnetic materials and devices for high density data storage. He has done extensive research on materials and devices for magnetic thin film memory, magnetic bubble memory, magneto-optical recording, magnetic tape recording, magnetic hard drives and magnetic random access memory. He has taught courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level on solid state electronics, magnetic data storage technologies and, as a result of his recognized leadership both in academia and industry, developed and taught a course on Leadership and Management of Research and Development.

Kryder received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1969 and his B.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1965. After receiving his Ph.D. he was a post-doctoral research fellow at Caltech from 1969 to 1971. He then went to the University of Regensburg in Germany as a Visiting Scientist for two years from 1971 to 1973 and then joined the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center as a Research Staff Member in 1973 and was promoted to Manager of Magnetic Bubble Device Research in 1975.

In 1978 he joined Carnegie Mellon University as an associate professor and was promoted to full professor in 1980. In 1982, Kryder led the effort to attract industrial funding for the Magnetics Technology Center (MTC). Then in 1989, Kryder led the effort to transition the MTC into a National Science Foundation funded Engineering Research Center, the Data Storage Systems Center. In 1996 he received the Stephen J. Jatras Professorship, and in 1997 he was appointed as a University Professor.

In 1998, he was recruited by Seagate Technology to build a research center, and he joined them as senior vice president of research. Starting as the first employee and with no physical facilities, he built Seagate Research into a center with over 160 employees including 135 scientists and engineers from 23 countries, who were housed in a new 200,000 square foot building with over a 40,000 square foot cleanroom. In 2003, he was promoted to chief technology officer. He led the effort to transition hard drives from longitudinal recording to perpendicular recording, which began occurring in products in 2005 and which is used in all hard drives made today. He also led Seagate Research to carry out the first spin stand demonstration of Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR), which has recently been commercially introduced by Seagate, and led the initial effort to introduce Full Disk Encryption, which today enables cloud computing.

Kryder retired from Seagate in 2007 and returned to CMU, where he continued teaching and carrying out research on perpendicular magnetic tunnel junction devices and HAMR media until becoming emeritus in 2016. Kryder is a Member of the US National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). He was twice selected as a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Magnetics Society (1985 and 1995), and was awarded the IEEE Magnetics Society Achievement Award in 1995. He was awarded the IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Systems Award and the IEEE Third Millennium Medal in 2000, the American Institute of Physics George E. Pake Prize in 2007 and the public service medal (Pingat Bakti Masyarakat) from the President of Singapore in 2008. In 2012, he was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award by Caltech and the Distinguished Engineer Award by CMU. In 2014 he received the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering from the Franklin Institute for his work on perpendicular recording and Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR).