Prof. K O'Grady received the Ph.D. in physics from The University of Wales in Bangor. He was a junior professor at Loughborough University of Technology and subsequently in the School of Electronic Engineering at Bangor, where he achieved a full professorship. In 2000 Prof. O’Grady relocated to the Physics Department at The University of York. Prof. O'sGrady's work concentrates on magnetization reversal in a wide range of materials, but particularly those finding application in the information storage industry such as magnetic hard disk drives. In his early career Prof. O'Grady investigated fundamental fine particle magnetism by utilizing colloidal dispersions (ferrofluids) as the medium for study. His current research interests are in the field of materials for hard disks, and also in exchange bias materials where an antiferromagnet is grown in contact with a ferromagnet and is used to pin one layer in a giant magnetoresistance stack in disk drive read sensors. Prof. O'Grady has published over 250 refereed works on the subject of magnetization reversal. He is a former president of the IEEE Magnetics Society and an aditor of The Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics. He has been associated with the Intermag Conference as Program Committee co-chair in 1996, 2002 and 2008, and will serve as the general chair of the 2010 Joint MMM-Intermag Conference. He is the founding director of the York Materials Research Institute. Contact: Professor Kevin O'Grady, Department of Physics, The University of York, Heslington, York, U.K.; telephone: +44 1904 432289; fax: +44 1904 432247; e-mail:(Click to show email)