DR. ANDREI KHURSHUDOV is a currently working at the Storage Technology Division of IBM Corporation in San Jose, California. His responsibilities include research and development of technologies for IBM's next generation hard disk drives. Before joining IBM, Khurshudov was a researcher at the Center for Magnetic Recording Research, UC San Diego, and at Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan. He holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, and served for eight years with the Mechanical Engineering Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Science. He runs the popular data storage website www.usbyte.com.