SPRUC 2017 Young Scientist Award

In this fiscal year 2017, "SPRUC 2017 Young Scientist Award" which was being invited had six candidates by the closing date.
　SPRUC 2017 Young Scientist Award Review Committee had rigorous process for selecting two winners.

The SPRUC 2017 Young Science Award (YSA) is given to a young scientist who is recognized as having established a notable achievement in the development of a new experimental technique or a new method for data analysis, or having achieved remarkable results in the studied field by making use of the characteristic features of SPring-8.

Award winner	Dr. Tatsuya Sakamaki / Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University
Research subject	Study for Earth's Interior using Synchrotron X-ray : Constraints on Earth's Inner Core Composition
Citation for the award	Over the recent years, Dr. Tatsuya Sakamaki has been scrutinizing earth's interior materials by integrating the stat-of-the-art experimental techniques at several beamlines of SPring-8 in a high temperature/pressure condition. From the results he obtained so far, it is highly expected to unveil the internal structure of the earth with a high precision. He successfully decreased the number of unknown elements incorporated in the earth's core by determining sound velocity of the main ingredient Fe using X-ray inelastic scattering method. Besides, he could determine the density and viscosity of magma under high-temperature/pressure by using X-ray absorption spectroscopy and radiography. This has actually led to a quantitative evaluation of magma's driving force that has reasonably explained why magma resides at the bottom of the plate. His achievement has been highly evaluated and published in the world-renowned journal, which lists himself as a first author. Dr. Sakamaki is certainly one of the most active young researchers in the relevant field and deserves a winner of SPRUC 2017 Young Scientist Award.

Award winner	Dr. Shinji Miwa / Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University
Research subject	Voltage Spintronics Devices Studied by Synchrotron X-ray Spectroscopy
Citation for the award	In the field of spintoronics, aiming at creating brand-new functional devices by utilizing both charge and spin of electrons, people are currently making a substantial effort to control magnetic anisotropy of nano-sized ferromagnetic metals with an extremely low consuming power. The voltage magnetic effect (VME) without applying any electric current is believed to be one of the most efficient solutions to achieve this goal. However, the guiding principles to realize suitable materials for VME have yet to be found because its underlying physics is still not clear. Dr. Shinji Miwa has dealt with this crucial problem and tried to unveil the origin of VME by integrating his highly skilled technique of epitaxial thin-film growth and the operando X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) spectroscopy using brilliant synchrotron radiation at SPring-8. As a result, he successfully clarified redox reaction and VME at the interfacial ferromagnetic layers. More importantly, he figured out from the result of operando-XMCD that the induced dipole magnetic moment (Tz) at the Pt layer by applying voltage takes an important role in VME rather than the induced orbital moment, which were believed to be the main cause so far. Therefore, his new finding concerning the induced dipole moment can be regarded as a new concept in the condensed matter physics and paves a pathway to material design for realizing a giant VME.