Rate My Professor Sebastiaan van Dijken

Sebastiaan van Dijken is Professor of Physics in the Department of Applied Physics at Aalto University, leading the Nanomagnetism and Spintronics (NanoSpin) research group. He joined Aalto University in 2008 as the first foreign professor in the department, prior to which he held positions at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland in 2007, Trinity College Dublin, and IBM Almaden Research Center, where he initiated his research on magnetism and spintronics in 2000 as a member of Stuart Parkin’s group. His research encompasses electric-field control of magnetism, tunneling transport in nanoscale devices, in situ transmission electron microscopy of complex oxide interfaces, magnetoplasmonics, magnonics, and topological nanomagnetism. Core areas of expertise include functional materials, nanotechnology, multiferroics, magnetism, and spintronics, with contributions to UN Sustainable Development Goal 7: Affordable and Clean Energy.

Van Dijken has produced 229 research outputs, featuring highly influential publications such as 'The 2021 magnonics roadmap' (Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, 2021; 810 citations), 'Magneto-ionic control of interfacial magnetism' (Nature Materials, 2015; 668 citations), 'Advances in magnetics roadmap on spin-wave computing' (IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 2022; 624 citations), 'Electric-field control of magnetic domain wall motion and local magnetization reversal' (Scientific Reports, 2012; 270 citations), and 'Tactile sensory coding and learning with bio-inspired optoelectronic spiking afferent nerves' (Nature Communications, 2020; 258 citations). He has earned the ERC Consolidator Grant (2012), ERC Proof-of-Concept Grants (2015, 2018), and Millennium Distinction Award from Technology Academy Finland (2015). As principal investigator on funded projects including 'Hybrid Magnonics for Energy Efficient and Neuromorphic Computing' (2023–2027), 'SPIN-WAVE: Reconfigurable Spin-Wave Computing' (2024–2026), and 'SMIFRE: Spin-wave magneto-ionics for reconfigurable electronics' (2025–2027), his work advances energy-efficient and neuromorphic computing technologies. He teaches freshman electromagnetism and a master's course in nanophysics.