Alan Spool

Dr. Alan Spool is the TOF-SIMS lead in the Materials Lab in San Jose for Western Digital Corporation. He has been responsible for TOF-SIMS analysis at IBM, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, HGST, a WD company, and now WD since 1991. He placed the very first order for a TRIFT based TOF-SIMS instrument on behalf of IBM in 1990. He earned his BS from Yale University, and his doctorate in Inorganic Chemistry from Columbia University. His post-doctorate in Mark Wrighton’s lab at MIT introduced him to the world of surface analysis. There he learned to perform XPS, Auger, and SIMS. In 1986 he joined IBM, initially doing XPS, but then RBS until 1991. He has been author or presenter of 36 papers including multiple invited talks, and the influential paper The Interpretation of Static Secondary Ion Mass Spectra in Surface and Interface Analysis in 2004. Dr. Spool was also a proud founding board member for the Vivace Youth Chorus of San Jose, for which his wife Peggy Spool is the founding Artistic Director.