Roger W Wood

Dr. Roger Wood hails originally from the UK and holds degrees from London University and the University of British Columbia.  He is a recently-retired Fellow from Western Digital in San Jose, California. Dr. Wood has a long history in the Magnetic Recording industry starting at Ampex in 1979, moving to IBM in 1986, to Hitachi in 2003, and to HGST/WDC in 2012. In 1996, he spent a year at the Data Storage Institute, Singapore. In 2003-2004, he was fortunate to enjoy an assignment in Odawara, Japan. At Ampex, Dr. Wood was the inspiration behind the introduction of the first PRML channel. At Hitachi, he led the advanced development effort on perpendicular recording. Dr. Wood is perhaps best known for predicting that conventional magnetic recording would be limited to about 1 Tbit/in2. To extend magnetic recording on conventional granular media, he proposed ‘TDMR’ an approach that has very recently started shipping commercially.  Dr. Wood's interests include magnetism, magnetic recording, signal-processing, and popular science writing. He holds 30 US patents and is an author on 100 journal papers. Dr. Wood is an IEEE Fellow and was the recipient of the 2009 Magnetics Society Achievement Award.