Paul Crowell received his PhD in low-temperature physics from Cornell University and was a postdoctoral associate at the CNRS, Grenoble and the University of California at Santa Barbara before joining the faculty of the University of Minnesota in 1997. He has been the recipient of a McKnight Land Grant Professorship, a Sloan Foundation Fellowship, and an NSF Career Award. He is currently an Associate Professor of Physics and a McKnight Presidential Fellow. Professor Crowell’s research focuses on spin dynamics in ferromagnets on sub-nanosecond time scales and spin transport in hybrid ferromagnet-semiconductor systems.