Dr. Jagadeesh S. Moodera joined MIT in 1981 as research staff at the Francis Bitter National Magnet Laboratory (FBML), where he currently leads the “Thin Film Magnetism, Superconductivity and Nanospintronics” group.  He is a visiting professor at Technological Univ. of Eindhoven (The Netherlands), an adjunct professor at Suffolk University, Distinguished Foreign Scientist at National Physical Laboratory (India) and a Distinguished Professor at IIT (Chennai, India). Dr. Moodera is a Fellow of American Physical Society and has received several national and international awards including Oliver Buckley Prize in Condensed Matter Physics from APS (2009).

Dr. Moodera’s many years of research in the area of spin polarized tunneling led to the breakthrough in observing tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) at room temperature in magnetic tunnel junctions (1995). This resulted in a huge surge in this area of research, currently one of the most active areas. TMR effect is used in all ultra-high density magnetic data storage since about 2004, as well as for the development of non-volatile magnetic random access memory (MRAM).

The research group over the years has consisted of students at all levels, postdoctorals and visiting scientists. Students include high school honors students during summer, diploma/masters candidates from Europe, undergraduates (UROP) and graduate students.

PhD, Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Madras

Thin films and heterostructures; spin tunneling and spintronics; superconductors; magnetism.

• 2009 – Oliver Buckley Prize in Condensed Matter Physics, APS (co-recipient) “To Robert Meservey, Terunobu Miyazaki, Jagadeesh Moodera and Paul Tedrow for pioneering work in the field of spin-dependent tunneling and for the application of these phenomena to the field of magnetoelectronics.”
• 2000 – American Physical Society Fellow “For pioneering and sustained contributions to the understanding of spin-polarized transport in solids, and for inspiring mentorship of students at all levels.”