Manager, Nanoscale Studies
IBM Almaden Research Center
Mailstop K13/D1
650 Harry Rd.
San Jose, CA 95120
408-927-2027
rugar@almaden.ibm.com

Daniel Rugar is currently Manager of Nanoscale Studies at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California. Dr. Rugar has a long history of contributions to the field of scanning microscopy. He began his work in microscopy as a Ph.D. student and Research Associate in Applied Physics at Stanford University. Working with Prof. Cal Quate, he developed a scanning acoustic microscope operating in superfluid helium with sub-100 nanometer spatial resolution. After joining IBM in 1984, he contributed to many of the early developments of atomic force microscopy, especially for imaging magnetic materials and for applications to data storage. He is co-inventor of the thermo-mechanical recording technique that is the basis of the IBM "Millipede" AFM storage device. He pioneered mechanical detection of ultrasmall forces, achieving the current record of 800 zeptonewtons in a 1 Hertz bandwidth. In 1992, he became inspired by the possibility of combining magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with ultrasensitive force detection to allow force microscopes to "see" below the surface and take three-dimensional images. He made the first demonstrations of magnetic resonance force microscopy (MRFM) in 1992 and has worked to improve its sensitivity and spatial resolution ever since. After improving the sensitivity by 7 orders of magnitude, this work reached a key milestone in 2004: the manipulation and detection of an individual electron spin.

Dr. Rugar has published over 100 scientific papers and holds 20 patents. He was the 1999-2000 Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Magnetic Society. He was a recipient of the 2004 Scientific American 50 award for research leadership in the field of imaging and the 2005 World Technology Award for Materials. He has also received IBM internal awards for contributions to scanning probe microscopy, near field optical data storage and single spin detection.

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