Robert Fontana

Fontana retired from IBM in July 2021. He lives in San Jose, California.

In 2008, Fontana re-joined the IBM Almaden Research Center to work on heads for magnetic tape recording. In particular he contributed to the development and implementation of TMR read heads suitable for the harsh tape recording environment. In addition, Fontana published several papers with S. Hetzler and G. Decad examining the global market and technology outlook for data storage technologies in general comparing solid-state, optical, hard disk drive, and tape.

Fontana was a Consulting Professor at Stanford University Materials Science and Engineering from 2006 to 2011

During his career, Fontana played an important role in several technical societies including the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council. In particular, he played an influential role with the IEEE Magnetics Society encouraged by Denis Mee, Mark Kryder, and Dave Thompson. Fontana served on the 'MagSoc' Administrative Committee and in various roles supporting IEEE conferences. For example, Fontana was Conference Chair for the joint MMM/Intermag conference in 2004. In 2001 and 2002, he served as president of the IEEE Magnetics Society and was formally recognized for his long-standing contributions to the Society in 2017.

From 2003 to 2007, Fontana worked for Hitachi GST (a result of Hitachi's purchase of IBM's disk-drive division). His work at Hitachi GST at that time focussed on nano structure e-beam fabrication and on novel flux detecting sensors including all-metal CPP GMR sensors that scale well to very small device sizes.

In 1981, Fontana joined the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, to work on thin film magnetic recording heads. He made significant contributions in the development of processing of both inductive write heads and three generations of magnetoresistive read heads. These included Anisotropic Magnetoresistance (AMR) heads, Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR) heads. and Tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) heads. Fontana's colleagues and collaborators included Ta Lin Hsu, Ching Tsang, Christopher Bajorek, Heiner Sussner, Prakash Kasiraj, Bob Scranton, Rick Dill.

Fontana joined Texas instruments in Dallas, Texas, in 1975 to work on magnetic bubble memory devices. He had been originally introduced to magnetic bubble memory in 1970 in an IEEE lecture by Andrew Eschenfelder of IBM. He was encouraged in this work by Dennis Bus who was also a visiting scientist at MIT and by Dean Toombs, the VP in charge of bubbles at TI

Fontana grew up in Champaign, Illinois. He received a Bachelor's, a Master's, and a Ph.D. degrees all from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Department of Electrical Engineering in 1969, 1971, and 1975, respectively. Fontana completed his Ph.D. on the optical and magnetic properties of thin films under the direction of Professor David J. Epstein.