Hiro Munekata

Hiro Munekata is a full professor at Laboratory for Future Interdisciplinary Research of Science and Technology (FIRST), Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech.), Japan. He received his Ph.D from Tokyo Tech. in 1984, and joined IBM T.J. Watson Research Center as a visiting scientist immediately after his graduation. In 1985, he became a research staff member at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, and worked primarily in the field of preparation and characterization of semiconductor quantum heterostructures by the end of 1993. His main accomplishments at IBM were invention of III-V-based magnetic semiconductors (In,Mn)As and discovery of spontaneous spin splitting due to Rashba effect in InAs quantum wells, both being known as pioneering works in the field nowadays known as semiconductor spintronics. In the beginning of 1994, he joined Tokyo Tech., first as an associate professor, and lately in 1998, was appointed a full professor. In Tokyo Tech., he has been working on semiconductor spintronics with emphasis on optical manipulation of spins and its applications. From time to time, he has been involved in organizing international conferences, such as PASPS-IV (2006, Sendai), NGS-11 (2009, Sendai), and MORIS. In the campus, he lectures an elemental class of electromagnetism (undergraduate course, in Japanese) and fundamentals of light and matters I and IIb (graduate course, English). He is a member of American Physical Society, IEEE, Japanese Society of Applied Physics (a fellow), and Magnetic Society of Japan (a fellow).