Magnetic Materials Expert Named Director of UA MINT Center

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — A former vice president and professor at a private Japanese university who previously was part of an IBM research team has been named director of The University of Alabama Center for Materials for Information Technology, known as MINT.

Dr. Takao Suzuki, a recent vice president and professor at Toyota Technological Institute in Nagoya Japan, is the new director of UA’s MINT Center, announced Dr. Judy Bonner, executive vice president and provost at UA. Suzuki began his UA duties full-time April 1.

Suzuki replaces Dr. William “Bill” Butler as director. Butler had served as director of MINT since 2001, and he remains active as a professor in UA’s department of physics and astronomy and as a MINT researcher.

“The University of Alabama is fortunate to have Dr. Suzuki to lead our MINT Center,” Bonner said. “His track record as an administrator, professor and researcher is impressive, and his proficiency in establishing collaborative efforts between higher education and industry will serve him well in his new position.”

“The University commends Dr. Butler for his outstanding leadership and service to MINT and UA over the last nine years,” Bonner said.

UA’s MINT Center is an interdisciplinary research center focusing on developing new materials to advance data storage.

Suzuki, who earned his bachelor’s and master’s from Waseda University in Tokyo and his doctorate from the California Institute of Technology, had served as a principal professor at Toyota Technological Institute, or TTI, since 1995 and a vice president there since 2004.

He has published more than 290 scientific papers, written four books and holds 17 patents. He is the vice president and president-elect of the IEEE Magnetics Society, scheduled to become president in 2011. He is on the editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Magnetics and serves as an advisory editor of the Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials. 

Named the 2007 IEEE Magnetics Society’s Distinguished Lecturer, Suzuki also received the Technical Achievement Award of the Magnetics Society of Japan in 1999. In addition to his time at TTI, Suzuki taught at Tohoku University for some 16 years and was a research staff member at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif. from 1988 through 1995.

As director of the Global Research and Education Center at TTI, Suzuki helped establish collaborations among TTI and other universities, industries and research centers. 

His research focuses on magnetism and magnetic materials of various types, in particular magnetic characteristics of ferromagnetic solids. He also works on applications of those materials for high density magnetic recording and magnetic sensors.

More than 30 faculty from seven academic programs comprise MINT. This research program was the first in the South to be designated as a National Science Foundation Materials Research and Science Engineering Center when it achieved that highly sought designation in 1994. MINT is active in research and education through global professional partnerships, including industries, national laboratories and universities around the world.