Dr. Yongfeng Guan Receives the 2008 Simon Prize
05/20/2008
Photo (left-right): Prof. William Bailey, Dr. Jane Faggen, Dr. Yongfeng Guan, and Prof. Michael Mauel
Dr. Yongfeng Guan is the 2008 Recipient of the Robert Simon Memorial Prize.
The Robert Simon Memorial Prize is awarded annually by the Department
of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics to the graduate student who
has completed the most outstanding dissertation. The prize was
established in 2001 by Dr. Jane Faggen with additional support from
friends and relatives of Mr. Simon. Dr. Guan received the award at a
reception on Tuesday, May 20, 2008 in the APAM Office.
Dr. Guan received his B.S. in Materials Physics from the University of
Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 2002, where he was awarded
the First-Class Outstanding Student Scholarship and the Zhenxiong
Industry Scholarship. He spent one year as a Ph.D. candidate in the
Department of Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, from
2002-2003, and transferred to Columbia University in Applied Physics,
Solid State, in Fall 2003. Shortly thereafter, he started his Ph.D.
dissertation research in Prof. William Bailey’s group in Materials
Science and Engineering.
In his Ph.D. dissertation research, “Ultrafast magnetization dynamics
in ferromagnetic ultrathin films and heterostructures,” Dr. Guan has
developed, in collaboration with synchrotron scientists at Brookhaven
National Laboratory, a powerful new technique to measure the high-speed
response of ultrathin magnetic films used in magnetic information
storage technology. The technique relies on x-ray magnetic circular
dichroism (XMCD), a soft x-ray spectroscopic measurement available at
national synchrotron facilities, to measure magnetization at elemental
sites (such as Fe and Ni sites in the magnetically soft alloy
Ni81Fe19). Dr. Guan has extended XMCD into the ultrafast time domain,
demonstrating element- and layer-specific magnetization dynamics
measurements at world-record temporal (2 ps) and rotational resolution
(0.05 deg), enabling studies of energy loss mechanisms. His work,
carried out at the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory,
is a collaboration with synchrotron scientists at Brookhaven National
Laboratory, and has appeared in Physical Review B, Journal of Applied
Physics, Review of Scientific Instruments, and Journal of Magnetism and
Magnetic Materials. During his Ph.D. dissertation research, Dr. Guan
was primary author on five and secondary author on two peer-reviewed
publications in archival journals, and was the recipient of the 2006
Materials Research Society Spring Meeting Graduate Student Award
(Silver Medal).
Dr. Guan is presently a postdoctoral researcher in the magnetic random
access memory (M-RAM) Group at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
in Yorktown Heights, NY.
Photos of the 2008 Simon Prize Reception