Dr. Paul D. Frank has served as Executive Director (CEO) of INSIC (and its predecessor, NSIC) since August 1999. Paul came to INSIC after a long and distinguished career at Applied Magnetics Corporation (AMC), including service as AMC’s Vice President of R&D and as Chief Technology Officer. He has also had extensive experience with INSIC dating back to our organization’s origins. He was part of the initial group of company executives that organized and started NSIC in 1990-91, and he was elected on three separate occasions to a term as Chair of the Board, serving in 1992, 1993 and 1997-98. Paul has also been a member of INSIC’s Executive Committee since its inception in 1992.

Paul was born and grew up in Walla Walla, Washington, and received his BS in mathematics and his PhD in computer science from the University of Washington in Seattle. He has worked in the information storage industry throughout his career, including his 30-year association with AMC, where he participated in the design and development of technologies for disk drives, disk heads, disk media, tape heads, floppy disk heads and magneto-optical disk drive mechanisms. He also served on the faculty of UC Santa Barbara and was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow in computer science at the University of Washington.

During the early 1980’s, Paul was an active early supporter in the formation of university research centers in data storage technology, including those at UCSD, Carnegie Mellon University and Santa Clara University, and he has served on the advisory boards of these and other university research centers. He has actively participated on Program Committees, Publications Committees, as Session Chairman and as an invited speaker at numerous data storage industry conferences. Paul is a member of the IEEE and the IEEE Magnetics Society.

Dr. Paul D. Frank is the third Executive Director in INSIC’s history, having succeeded John L. Simonds (1991-95) and Dr. Barry H. Schechtman (1995-99).