Bob Sinclair – Stanford University
Professor Robert (Bob) Sinclair has been a faculty member in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering since 1977. He obtained his degrees in materials science at Cambridge University and was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Berkeley for four years. His research has focused on the development and application of advanced transmission electron microscopy techniques, especially in situ high-resolution microscopy, to basic materials studies related to semiconductor devices, magnetic recording, nanotechnology in cancer research and energy systems. At Stanford, he has been Department Chair (2004-2014), Director of the Stanford Nanocharacterzation Laboratory (2002-2013), Director of the Big Overseas Studies Program (2010-2012) and Director of the Wallenberg Research Link (present). He was Chair of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on “Midsize Facilities: the Infrastructure for Materials Research” (2003-2006), and he received the Distinguished Scientist Award (Physical Sciences) from the Microscopy Society of America (2009), the David M. Turnbull Lectureship of the Materials Research Society (2012) and the John M. Cowley Distinguished Lectureship, Arizona State University (2015).
Deb Kelly – Penn State University
Dr. Deb Kelly’s research focuses on innovative approaches to study biological systems, ranging from human viruses to cancer. Central to her work is high-resolution imaging, primarily cryo-Electron Microscopy (EM). Invasive breast cancer threatens the lives of women everywhere and there is no precise treatment for the disease. Her team has developed a tunable microchip toolkit to study mutations in the breast cancer susceptibility protein, BRCA1. Using this new tools, the Kelly lab expects to determine strategic insights for the molecular detection and prevention of BRCA1-related cancers. Her team is on the cutting edge of the burgeoning new field they call structural oncology.
Ian MacLaren – University of Glasgow
Ian MacLaren’s research concentrates on using electron microscopy to study the structure and chemistry of materials and devices at the nanoscale.
Current research mainly uses either: Quantitative electron energy loss spectroscopy including DualEELS and ultra-high energy loss spectroscopy and/or scanned diffraction and 4D-STEM using fast, pixelated, direct electron detectors.
These techniques are applied to a wide range of topics and materials including functional oxides, high-strength steels, optical coatings for high precision interferometry, infrared semiconductor devices, and mineral alteration in terrestrial and extraterrestrial processes.
Jim Zuo – University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Jian-Min Zuo received his Ph.D. in Physics from Arizona State University in 1989. He then took a three-year postdoctoral fellowship at the National Science Foundation center for high-resolution electron microscopy and the Physics department at ASU. During this time he co-authored a book on electron microdiffraction with John Spence. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Illinois, he was a research scientist in Physics at ASU and a visiting scientist to a number of universities and institutes in Germany, Japan, and Norway. His research during this period focused on the development of quantitative electron diffraction techniques and study of crystal electron density and bonding. At Illinois, Prof. Zuo has developed research programs focused on structure and property relationships in a range of materials, including metal nanoparticles, semiconductors, electroceramics, oxide interfaces, and nanotubes. He also has developed an ultrafast electron diffraction facility and atomic resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy and electron energy loss spectroscopy using the aberration-corrected electron microscope at the Center for Microanalysis of Materials. He has published more than 140 papers in scientific journals and several invited book chapters on electron diffraction and diffractive imaging. His honors include the JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) postdoctoral fellowship, outstanding young oversea researcher award from National Science Foundation of China, and Chair of Excellence of French Nanoscience Foundation. Zuo is the recipient of the 2001 Burton Award of the Microscopy Society of America.
Juan Carlos Idrobo – Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Juan Carlos Idrobo is an R&D Staff Scientist at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences in Oak Ridge National Laboratory. His research consists of applying aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy techniques combined with first-principles calculations to study the structure, electronic, and optical properties of materials. Idrobo holds Physics degrees from Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia (B.Sc., 2000), University of Illinois at Chicago (master, 2003) and University of California (Ph.D., 2004).
Klaus van Benthem – University of California, Davis, CA
Klaus van Benthem is interested in the investigation of the functionalities of novel nano-materials. He uses electron microscopy tools to image nano-materials with atomic resolution and correlate their morphologies and atomic structures with nano-scale and macro-scale physical properties. His interests are also in the development of new strategies to investigate materials under more realistic environmental conditions, such as gas phases, liquids, electrical and mechanical fields, etc. His overall vision is the characterization of functional materials with atomic resolution under their anticipated working conditions, i.e., “at work”.
Microstructure evolution in ceramics, wetting and dewetting behavior of metal thin films, field-assisted sintering, aberration-corrected electron microscopy
van Benthem is interested in developing a fundamental mechanistic understanding of structure-property relationships and related phenomena in functional nanomaterials, focusing on defect structure evolution under externally-applied stress fields. His research group uses a variety of atomic-resolution electron microscopy techniques to explore wetting-dewetting phenomena of thin films, microstructure evolution during ceramic processing and the 3D assembly of individual nanoparticles. Combined with experiments on materials under real-world operating conditions, van Benthem’s work provides unique insights into materials’ reliability under extreme conditions and the development of new manufacturing techniques.
van Benthem is the scientific director of the department’s Advanced Materials Characterization and Testing Laboratory (AMCaT).
Ramasse, Quentin – University of Leeds
Areas of expertise: Scanning transmission electron microscopy; electron energy loss spectroscopy; 2D materials; complex oxides; nano-materials characterization.
Quentin Ramasse holds a joint Chair in Advanced Electron Microscopy at the School of Chemical and Process Engineering and School of Physics, University of Leeds. After an M.Eng. at Ecole Centrale Paris and an M.Math (Part III of the Mathematical Tripos) at the University of Cambridge, he obtained his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Cambridge as a member of the Microstructural Physics Group working on optical aberration measurements methodologies for aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM). He then moved to the National Center for Electron Microscopy (NCEM) in Berkeley, a U.S. Department of Energy-funded user facility, initially for a postdoctoral fellowship before being appointed Staff Scientist. At NCEM he took part in the TEAM project which saw development of the world’s first 0.5Å electron microscope. Since 2010, Quentin is the Director of the SuperSTEM Laboratory, the EPSRC UK National Research Facility for Advanced Electron Microscopy, which is located on the outskirts of Warrington on the SciTech Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus. Quentin has published extensively in the field of STEM-EELS, with a dual focus on STEM technique development and on applications to a wide range of energy harvesting materials, from 2-dimensional materials such as graphene and MoS2 nano-catalysts to complex oxides.
Robert Klie – University of Illinois, Chicago
Robert F. Klie is a Full Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Chicago focusing on the experimental study of interfaces in complex oxide material using atomic-scale Z-contrast imaging, electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) and in-situ characterization of energy materials. Dr. Klie has developed in-situ characterization of structural and electronic phase transitions in complex oxide materials using aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM). He has published over 150 peer-reviewed papers with more than 4,000 citations, given more than 80 invited talks at international conferences, and has an h-index of 30.
Shirley Meng – University of California, San Diego
Dr. Y. Shirley Meng received her Ph.D. in Advance Materials for Micro & Nano Systems from the Singapore-MIT Alliance in 2005, after which she worked as a postdoc research fellow and became a research scientist at MIT. Shirley currently holds the Zable Endowed Chair Professor in Energy Technologies and is Professor of NanoEngineering and Materials Science, University of California San Diego (UCSD). She is the founding Director of Sustainable Power and Energy Center (http://spec.ucsd.edu). Shirley received the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award in 2011, UCSD Chancellor’s Interdisciplinary Collaboratories Award in 2013, Science Award in Electrochemistry by BASF and Volkswagen in 2014, C.W. Tobias Young Investigator Award of the Electrochemical Society (2016), IUMRS-Singapore Young Scientist Research Award (2017),International Coalition for Energy Storage and Innovation (ICESI) Inaugural Young Career Award (2018), American Chemical Society ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces Young Investigator Award (2018) and Finalist for the Blavatnik National Award (2018). Her research group – Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion (LESC) – focuses on functional nano and micro-scale materials for energy storage and conversion. The more recent programs include the design, synthesis, processing, and operando characterization of energy storage materials in advanced rechargeable batteries; new intercalation materials for sodium-ion batteries; and advanced flow batteries for grids large scale storage. Shirley is the author and co-author of more than 160 peer-reviewed journal articles, 1 book chapter and6patents. She serves on the executive committee for battery division at the Electrochemical Society and she is the Editor-in-Chief for MRS Energy & Sustainability.
Susanne Stemmer – University of California, Santa Barbara
Susanne Stemmer is Professor of Materials at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She did her doctoral work at the Max-Planck Institute for Metals Research in Stuttgart (Germany) and received her degree from the University of Stuttgart in 1995. Following postdoctoral positions, she moved to Rice University, where she was Assistant Professor from 1999 to 2002. In 2002, she joined the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research interests are in the development of scanning transmission electron microscopy techniques, molecular beam epitaxy, functional and strongly correlated oxide heterostructures, and topological materials. She has authored or co-authored more than 240 publications. Honors include election to Fellow of the American Ceramic Society, Fellow of the American Physical Society, Fellow of the Materials Research Society, Fellow of the Microscopy Society of America, and a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship of the Department of Defense.
Wayne Kaplan – Technion Israel Institute of Technology
On receiving his doctorate, Prof. Kaplan spent one year as a Humboldt fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut für Metallforschung, Stuttgart. He was also a visiting scientist at N.I.S.T. during the summer of 1994 and spent three months as a Minerva Fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut für Metallforschung, Stuttgart (1992). In 1995 he joined the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at the Technion. He is a member of the Materials Research Society, the American Ceramic Society, and the Israel Microscopy Society.
Microstructural design objectives for metal-ceramic joints and composites are often limited by the nature of the metal-ceramic interface. Two very different materials must be brought into contact with a specific interfacial geometry, and a physico-chemical bond must be formed between them. The process may include the formation of interface phases due to chemical reactions, both between the components and with the process atmosphere. The chemical and mechanical stability of the interface is dependent on the possibility of interface reactions as well as on the interface microstructure, which includes the interfacial discontinuity associated with the change in the chemical bond type. While the properties of metal-ceramic components are sensitively dependent on the properties of the joint forming materials, the structure and quality of the interfacial bond is often the major factor which determines the final macro-properties. An understanding of the chemical nature of the metal-ceramic interface, as well as its microstructure and crystallography, is critical for the successful development of metal-ceramic joints and components.
Two main experimental techniques are adapted to these issues. In the first, contact angles between liquid metals and ceramic substrates are measured in-situ and dynamically, under controlled temperature and gas partial pressures. In addition, the energy of solid-solid interfaces is determined via Winterbottom analysis. Secondly, quantitative high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) and analytical electron microscopy (AEM) are applied to study the metal-ceramic interfaces formed during the wetting experiments. In-situ HRTEM using a TEM hot-stage provides direct information on wetting, reactions, segregation, and ordering at the atomic level.
Yi Cui – Stanford University
Cui studies nanoscale phenomena and their applications broadly defined. Research Interests: Nanocrystal and nanowire synthesis and self-assembly, electron transfer and transport in nanomaterials and at the nanointerface, nanoscale electronic and photonic devices, batteries, solar cells, microbial fuel cells, water filters, and chemical and biological sensors.
Yi-fan Cheng – University of California, San Francisco
We are interested in studying the three-dimensional structures of macromolecular complexes: their structural architectures, the regulation of their function and the dynamic processes of their assembly and disassembly, by molecular electron microscopy (cryoEM). A full understanding of the biological functions/processes of any macromolecular complex requires structural information at a wide range of resolutions, including atomic details of its components, spatial arrangements of these components and interactions between them. CryoEM can be used to study macromolecules in their native conformations at a wide resolution range, from sub-nanometer resolution (single-particle cryoEM) to the cellular level (electron tomography).
Yimei Zhu – Brookhaven National Laboratory
Yimei Zhu is a Senior Scientist at the US Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). He also is an adjunct professor at the Department of Applied Physics and Mathematics, Columbia University, and the Department of Physics and Astronomy as well as the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Zhu is the Group Leader and Principal Investigator of the DOE Basic Energy Science’s core-research program “Nanostructure and Structural Defects of Advanced Materials” and the Electron Microscopy Facility Leader of the Center for Functional Nanomaterials at BNL. Dr. Zhu received his Ph.D. from Nagoya University, Japan (studying with T. Imura) and was a Research Associate at the University of Virginia (with D. Kuhlmann-Wilsdorf). He joined Brookhaven as Assistant Scientist in 1988, and was promoted through the rank, awarded tenure in 1997, and appointed as Senior Scientist in 2002. His current research focuses on studies of nanoscale phenomena that control materials’ functionality, such as superconductivity and magnetism. Dr. Zhu co-authored one book, edited and co-edited six books. He has written more than a dozen book chapters and review articles and published over 200 articles in refereed journals and 100 in conference proceedings. He also delivered over 70 invited talks at major international conferences, excluding seminars and lectures at universities and research institutions. During his career, he has served on various academic committees and received many honors including those from the US and foreign governments and scientific societies, as well as from Brookhaven National Laboratory. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society. Dr. Zhu’s wide research interests cover solid-state physics; nanoscale materials science and engineering; electronic structure and superconductivity; magnetic structure and magnetism; electron-beam scattering and its interaction with matter; synchrotron x-ray and neutron scattering; structural defects and interfaces in perovskites and transition-metal oxides; and, structural modeling and density functional theory calculations. Experimental research experience includes film growth; nanopatterning and lithography; quantitative analysis of intensity and phase of electron diffraction; atomic imaging; electron energy-loss spectroscopy; electron holography; in-situ magnetization and Lorentz microscopy; x-ray and neutron diffraction; and x-ray spectroscopy (XANES and EXAFS).
Yong Wang – Zhejian University
Dr. Yong Wang is a professor at the Center of Electron Microscopy, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University. He received a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Xiangtan University in 2001 and his Ph.D. of condensed matter physics from the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, supervised by Prof. Ze Zhang. In 2006, he joined Prof. Jin Zou and Prof. Max Lu’s groups as a post-doctor at the University of Queensland, Australia. From 2008, He worked as an ARC Research Fellow at UQ until 2012 and during 2010-2011, he joined Prof. Kang L. Wang’s group at UCLA as a visiting scholar. In early 2012, he started his new position at School of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University as a full professor.
Since 2004, Dr. Wang has published over 140 SCI articles with three in Nature Nanotechnology, one in Nature Materials, and more than 30 in Nano Lett., JACS, ACS Nano, Adv. Mater. and PRL. He also received several prestigious awards, including the 2008 Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2010 UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award, and 2013 Qiushi Outstanding Young Scholar Award. He is also honorably appeared as one of the cover figures of the ARC annual report (2011-2012) and strategic plan (2013-2014) of Australia.
Tim Rupert – UC Irvine
Specialties: Experimental mechanics, metallurgy, materials science, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), focused ion beam (FIB) microscopy and fabrication, molecular dynamics (MD) simulation techniques.
Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (Joint Appointment)
Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2011)M.S.E., Johns Hopkins University (2007)
B.S., Johns Hopkins University (2007)