Hisashi Kobayashi, a professor at Princeton University, has been awarded this year's Technology Award of the Eduard Rhein Foundation together with two researchers at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, IBM officials said Tuesday.
Kobayashi, together with Francois Dolivo and Evangelos Eleftheriou, will receive the prize -- which recognizes achievements in the area of information technology -- for their contributions to hard-disk drive data-recording technology. For decades, the technology they developed helped boost recording densities and data rates markedly.
In 1982, Kobayashi became the first head of the Japan Science Institute, the predecessor of IBM's Tokyo Research Laboratory. He also became the first Asian to head a faculty at an Ivy League university.
The award ceremony is to be held in the Deutsches Museum in Munich on Oct. 15.