Oct 1 2009
The Information Storage Consortium has awarded its 2009 Technical Achievement Award to Jeffrey Pyun, UA assistant professor of chemistry, for pioneering research that improves materials for magnetic tape used for long-term archival storage.
Nanotechnology Research Earns Award for UA Chemist" />Jeffrey Pyun (left), winner of INSIC's 2009 Technical Achievement Award, and Barry Schecthman, INSIC's executive director emeritus and technical director of the TAPE program.
Pyun has been developing nanostructured thin films of organic polymers and magnetic nanoparticles as novel binder materials for magnetic tape – which is still the most reliable and cost-effective media for long-term archival storage.
The thin films are more resistant to corrosion and can be processed to store higher densities of data on tape media.
Pyun received the award at an Information Storage Consortium program review in Santa Clara, Calif., last month. His award is only the third the consortium has given for tape research, and Pyun is the youngest recipient to earn the distinction. Through the consortium, he collaborates closely in the project with industrial researchers from International Business Macines Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., Sony Corp. and Imation Corp.
The consortium is the research consortium for the worldwide information storage industry. Members include more than 65 corporations, universities and government organizations with common interests in the field of digital information storage.
Pyun completed his doctorate at Carnegie Mellon University in 2002, and was a post-doctoral fellow at the IBM Almaden Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. He joined the UA chemistry department in August 2004.
His other honors include an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2009), an IBM Faculty Award (2007), an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (2007) and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2006).