V.P., Media Business Group

With more than 25 years of experience in the storage industry, Ian Sanders leads Hitachi Global Storage Technologies’ (Hitachi GST) Media Business Group as vice president and general manager. In his current role, Dr. Sanders is responsible for the development and manufacturing of all Hitachi GST thin-film, hard disk media, with operations in San Jose, California, Shenzhen, China and Odawara, Japan.

Before joining Hitachi GST, Dr. Sanders spent four years as president of MMC Technology, a former Maxtor subsidiary, manufacturing hard disk media and substrates. Having co-founded the company in 1996, he served in the role of senior vice president and chief technology officer before becoming president in 2001. As president, he directed the rapid expansion of MMC to become a significant media supplier.

Before that, Dr. Sanders was vice president of media research and engineering at Seagate. In this role, he was responsible for worldwide research, development, and process and test engineering for media products.

Dr. Sanders began his career as a postdoctoral fellow at the IBM Thomas Watson Research Center. After various research staff and management positions, he joined the IBM Storage Systems Division in 1991. As senior manager of disk technology development, Mr. Sanders successfully coordinated film disk technology advancement between research and product development functions.