Stephan von Molnár received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Riverside (1965). He joined the Research Staff of the IBM Watston Research Center in 1965, where he held various management positions, and has been a Professor of Physics at the Florida State University since 1994, and the Director of MARTECH, the center for Materials Research and Technology, until the Fall of 2007. His expertise includes magneto-transport properties of magnetic semiconductors, magnetism, the thermal properties of amorphous and crystalline solids, and the fabrication and characterization of magnetic nanoparticles. His accomplishments include the conceptual development and experimental observations of magnetic polarons and the demonstration of the magnetically driven insulator-metal transition. Professor von Molnáhas received an outstanding contribution award for research while at IBM. He has been a Senior Research Fellow of the S.R.C., and is an Alexander von Humboldt Senior U.S. Scientist awardee and a Fellow of the American Physical Society as well as the AAAS. Presently, he is the Robert A. Kromhout Professor of Physics and holds the title of Distinguished Research Professor.

His materials expertise centers on rare earth metals and alloys, transition metal based diluted magnetic semiconductors, and the perovskite type HiTc and CMR compounds. As part of his research on the magnetic nano-particles, he has collaborated in the development of a novel Hall gradiometer for their magnetic characterization. His interest in these subjects was motivated in large part by their potential for application in such areas as storage technologies and magnetic sensing devices.

During his tenure at IBM from 1965-1993, he continuously remained an active researcher while taking on various management positions. At MARTECH, he has established cohesive focus areas for research, including spin electronics and biomaterials and technology. Towards that end, a laboratory for micro- and nanofabrication and characterization has been created within MARTECH. Currently he is focusing on implementing and using MARTECH's fabrication techniques to broaden the research base to include large scale molecules (soft matter) and novel device geometries.