Peking University, October 15, 2026: Ju Ganping, an alumnus of Peking University (PKU), has been named one of three recipients of the 2027 IEEE Cledo Brunetti Award for his contributions to heat-assisted magnetic technology powering ultra-high-capacity data storage. He shares the award with Edward Charles Gage and Jan-Ulrich Thiele. Their efforts have enabled larger storage of digital information.


Ju is the Chief Media Technologist at Seagate Technology, where he and his team work on heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) and next-generation recording technologies. He received a bachelor's degree in physics from PKU in 1994 and a PhD from Brown University in 1999, specializing in ultrafast spin dynamics. In 1999, he joined Seagate as one of the founding members of its HAMR team. Since then, he has focused on the HAMR recording media, working on magnetic properties, materials, and thermal design. He has co-authored more than 100 academic papers and holds over 50 patents. In 2026, he was elected IEEE Fellow in recognition of his contributions to HAMR recording media.

The IEEE Cledo Brunetti Award, one of IEEE's Technical Field Awards, was established in 1975 through a bequest from Cledo Brunetti. It honors individuals or teams for outstanding contributions to nanotechnology and microsystem miniaturization.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a nonprofit organization and the world's largest technical professional organization, dedicated to fostering knowledge exchange and innovation in electrical engineering, electronics, computing, and related fields through publications, international conferences, and standards development.

Written by: Han Yuge
Edited by: Wu You, Chen Shizhuo
Source: Beidaren WeChat (Chinese)