Eric Fullerton is a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, San Diego in the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and NanoEngineering and is an Endowed Chair and Director of the Center for Memory and Recording Research. He received his B.Sc. in Physics from Harvey Mudd College in 1984 and his Ph.D. in Physics from UC San Diego in 1991. Previous to joining UC San Diego he held research positions at Argonne National Laboratory, the IBM Almaden Research Center and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. His current research focuses the synthesis and characterization of magnetic nanostructures, both as a probe of materials in reduced dimensions and for the development of novel information technologies. He has co-authored >370 journal articles, been issued 51 US patents, is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the IEEE and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.