The Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN) is pleased to present a Distinguished Lecture by Prof. Hideo Ohno, Special Honorary Professor and former President of Tohoku University , Sendai, Japan.
Please join us on Thursday, October 23 at 11:00 a.m. to hear Professor Ohno's lecture titled "Spintronics at the Nanoscale: Enabling Green Information Processing."
Where: QNC 1501
When: Thursday, October 23, 2025 | 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
About the lecture
As artificial intelligence continues to reshape our society, the energy demands of information processing present an urgent and growing challenge. Large-scale data centers powering AI models consume vast amounts of electricity, while at the other end of the digital spectrum, trillions of sensors embedded in our environment must operate under strict power contraints, often relying on small batteries or energy harvesting. These sensors not only form the physical backbone of digital infrastructure but also generate the real-world data essential for AI applications. Together, they underscore the critical need for transformative technologies in computing.
Spintronics, which utilizes the spin of electrons, offers a promising path forward. Magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs), a core spintronic element, provide nonvolatile memory that retains information without standby power, enabling drastic reductions in energy consumption as opposed to conventional working memory such as DRAM and SRAM. These devices also support novel architectures that move beyond the traditional separation of logic and memory, and have been implemented in low-power AI accelerators and embedded systems at the edge.
Furthermore, MTJs with engineered instability can be integrated with transistors to form probabilistic bits (p-bits), where the inherent thermal fluctuation of the MTJ is harnessed to generate controllable randomness. These hybrid devices enable probabilistic computing—a paradigm particularly suited for tasks where conventional digital approaches fall short, including optimization, inference, and learning. These developments signal a future where nanoscale spintronics becomes a foundational technology for green and intelligent information processing.
About the speaker
Hideo Ohno is Special Honorary Professor and Special Senior Advisor to the President at Tohoku University, Sendai Japan. He served as the 22nd President of the university from 2018 to 2024. He received his Ph.D. in Electronic Engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1982 and was a visiting scientist at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center from 1988 to 1990. He was appointed Professor at Tohoku University in 1994.
Professor Ohno is internationally recognized for his pioneering contributions to spintronics, particularly in magnetic tunnel junctions and spintronic devices for energy-efficient computing. He has published over 690 papers in the fields of spintronics and semiconductor science, with more than 65,000 citations (h-index 99), and has been named a Highly Cited Researcher five times.
As President, he led Tohoku University’s successful selection as the first and currently only university supported by Japan’s 10-trillion-yen University Fund for International Excellence, driving reforms in research governance, strategic focus, and global engagement. His honors include among others the Japan Academy Prize, the Agilent Europhysics Prize, the Leo Esaki Prize, the IEEE David Sarnoff Award, and the IEEE Magnetics Society Achievement Award. He is a Fellow of IEEE, APS, JSAP, and IOP, and an International Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. He holds honorary doctorates from Université de Lorraine, University of Warsaw, and University of York