Dr. Wood hails originally from Bradford, Yorkshire, UK. In 1972, he received
his B.Sc degree in Electrical Engineering from University College, London. From
1972 to 1975, he was with British Telecoms working on short-hop digital microwave
links.
Dr. Wood’s fascination with magnetic recording started in 1975 at the
University of British Columbia where his Ph.D. thesis involved recording satellite
data onto a helical-scan tape recorder. In that thesis can be found the first
reference to the widely-used “extracted dipulse” characterization
technique that he subsequently popularized.
In 1979 he moved to Ampex Corporation where he was the inspiration for and
driving-force behind the development of Partial-Response Maximum-Likelihood
(PRML) detection. In 1985, the DCRS tape recorder became the first product ever
shipped with PRML. For many years it was Ampex’s most successful product.
In 1986 Dr. Wood joined IBM where he managed groups in advanced channel development,
recording systems, and disk drive prototyping. Many of Dr. Wood’s innovations
have been in the area of signal-processing. These include the post-processor
technique and the use of a time-varying trellis in detection. Both of these
schemes together with generalized PRML are now ubiquitous in hard disk drives
(HDD). In 1996 Dr. Wood enjoyed a year as Visiting Senior Fellow at the National
University of Singapore where he worked closely with the Data Storage Institute
on a new detection process called multi-level decision feedback equalization
and on an advanced HDD actuator design.
In 2003 Dr. Wood joined the newly formed Hitachi Global Storage Technologies
Company, and took an 18-month assignment in Japan, where his activities focused
on perpendicular recording. A long-time champion of this technology, he was
delighted by its introduction into HDD products in 2007. He was lead engineer
for the advanced HDD development efforts in perpendicular recording, resulting
in a string of highly successful products.
Dr. Wood is perhaps best known for his controversial prediction in 1999 that
conventional magnetic recording could be pushed to a limiting density of approximately
1 Terabit/sq.in., which is now widely accepted. Recently he has been instrumental
in proposing an alternative recording architecture called two-dimensional magnetic
recording. This approach relies on non-conventional writing techniques and two-dimensional
readback and may extend the usefulness of conventional granular media to 10
Terabit/sq.in.
Dr. Wood has been an outstanding contributor to the magnetics community through
his technical work in magnetic recording as well as through his activities in
support of the IEEE Magnetics Society. Dr. Wood has authored more than 70 journal
papers and holds 10 US patents. He is always ready to share his knowledge with
students and fellow scientists and is a popular speaker, having given many invited
talks at conferences and short-courses. He served as Magnetics Society Distinguished
Lecturer in 1994. He has served as Chair of the INTERMAG, TMRC, and APMRC conferences,
and in numerous other capacities including several terms on the Magnetics Society’s
Administrative Committee. Dr. Wood is also a member of the Magnetics Society
of Japan and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Dr. Wood received
the Technical Leadership Award of the National Storage Industry Consortium in
2008. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.