We learned with great sadness that our former colleague Sébastien Bandiera passed away this week in a mountain accident. Sébastien performed a very successful PhD work in SPINTEC on memory cells involving thermally-assisted switching, spin-transfer torque and perpendicular anisotropy. He joined Crocus Technology right after his defense, in November 2011, in the R&D team for materials. Sébastien will remain in our memories as a very sociable colleague, with very professional skills, scientific knowledge and successful achievements. It is a great loss for the Grenoble spintronics community.