Jonathan Z Sun

Jonathan Sun is a Research Staff Member at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. He’s been with IBM Research for over 25 years, and has focused his work over the last decade and more on the device and materials physics of spin-torque and related phenomena and magneto-dynamics. Jonathan got his BS in Physics from Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and his PhD degree in Applied Physics from Stanford University. After a three-year stint at Superconductor Technologies, a start-up in Santa Barbara, CA, he came to IBM Yorktown, first studying device physics related to magnetic field sensing with Josephson junctions and SQUIDs of high-temperature superconductors, then on spin-dependent transport physics, materials, and dynamics. Jonathan holds some of the very early patents on spin-torque switched junction device concepts. He is one of the first to grasp the concept and implications of spin-torque in transport physics and in dynamics, to experimentally demonstrate STT switching, and to formulate the basic device- and materials-physics understanding of the STT phenomena that is the science behind the STT-technology today. Jonathan is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and a Fellow of the IEEE.