Prof. Dr. Nigel Browning, University of Liverpool, UK

Professor Nigel Browning is currently the Chair of the Electron Microscopy in the School of Engineering and the School of Physical Sciences and Director of the Albert Crewe Centre for Electron Microscopy at the University of Liverpool (since 2017). He received his undergraduate degree in Physics from the University of Reading in the UK (1988), and his PhD in Physics from the University of Cambridge, UK (1991). He has held positions at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (1992–1995), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2003–2006), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (2006–2011), and most recently, was a Laboratory Fellow and Initiative Lead for the Chemical Imaging Initiative (CII) at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) (2011–2017). He was also Assistant/Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois in Chicago (1996–2002) and Professor of Materials Science (2003–2011) and Professor of Molecular Biology (2009–2011) at the University of California–Davis. He has over 30 years of experience in the development of new methods in electron microscopy for the high spatial, temporal and spectroscopic resolution analysis of engineering and biological structures. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Microscopy Society of America (MSA). He received the Burton Award from the Microscopy Society of America in 2002 and the Coble Award from the American Ceramic Society in 2003, for the development of atomic resolution methods in scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM). With his collaborators at LLNL, he also received R&D 100 and Nano 50 Awards in 2008, and a Microscopy Today Innovation Award in 2010 for the development of the dynamic transmission electron microscope (DTEM). He has over 400 publications (~27,000 citations, h-index=88) and has given over 300 invited presentations on the development and application of advanced TEM methods. During his career, he has been the primary research advisor for over 60 PhD students and Postdoctoral Research Associates, many of whom now lead their own research programs at institutions around the world. In addition to his academic research, he is a co-founder and Vice-President for Strategy at a start-up company (Nuxutra), which is commercializing IP that he co-developed during his time at PNNL (10 patents in compressive sensing, super-resolution and machine learning imaging technologies).

Prof. Dr. Niels de Jonge, INM - Leibniz Institute for New Materials, Germany

Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Niels de Jonge received his MSc in Physics from the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands (1994), and a PhD in Natural Sciences, specializing in Biophysics, from the University of Freiburg, Germany (1999). He worked as a senior scientist at Philips Electronics, Research Department, Netherlands, on carbon nanotube electron sources (2000–2005). He was strategically hired at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA (ORNL), where he pioneered scanning the transmission electron microscopy (STEM) of liquid specimens (2005–2010). He joined Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, USA, as an Assistant Professor of Biophysics (2007–2011). He is currently senior group leader at the INM—Leibniz Institute for New Materials, Germany (2012–present), and Honorary Professor of Experimental Physics, Saarland University, Germany. His main research area is the liquid phase electron microscopy of biological samples, for example, to study membrane proteins in cancer cells. He received the ORNL innovation award, the ORNL Esprit de Corps award, the 2016 MRS Innovations in Materials Characterization Award, the 2016 European Microscopy Award life sciences category, and obtained an Honoris Causa at the University of Lyon, France (2017). He was Chair of the first Gordon Research Conference on Liquid Phase Electron Microscopy, Tuscany, Italy (2020). He published a total of 265 papers and book chapters, of which 174 were in peer-reviewed journals. His h-index = 36 (Web of Science) or 45 (Google Scholar).

Prof. Dr. Nathan C. Gianneschi, Northwestern University, IL, United States

Prof. Dr. Nathan C. Gianneschi received his BSc (Hons) at the University of Adelaide, Australia in 1999. In 2005, he completed his PhD at Northwestern University. Following a Dow Chemical postdoctoral fellowship at The Scripps Research Institute, in 2008, he began his independent career at the University of California, San Diego, where, until June 2017, he was Teddy Traylor Scholar and Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, NanoEngineering and Materials Science and Engineering. In July 2017, Gianneschi moved his research group to Northwestern University, where he is currently Jacob and Rosaline Cohn Professor of Chemistry, Materials Science and Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering. The Gianneschi group takes an interdisciplinary approach to nanomaterials research with a focus on multifunctional materials, with interests that include biomedical applications, programmed interactions with biomolecules and cells, and basic research into nanoscale materials design, synthesis and characterization. For this work, he has been awarded the NIH Director's New Innovator Award, the NIH Director's Transformative Research Award and the White House's highest honor for young scientists and engineers, with a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. Prof. Gianneschi was awarded a Dreyfus Foundation Fellowship, is a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and is an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow.

Prof. Dr. Deb Kelly, Pennsylvania State University, PA, United States

Prof. Dr. Deb Kelly completed her PhD in Molecular Biophysics at Florida State University and her post-doctoral training in Structural Biology at Harvard Medical School. During these pursuits, she developed technical breakthroughs in the field of cryo-EM that are now being used by the liquid-phase EM community. As interest in liquid-phase imaging has skyrocketed in recent years, the Kelly team has been leading the adaptation of this technology for biomedical applications, in particular virus research. Dr. Kelly is currently a professor of Biomedical Engineering at Pennsylvania State University, where she holds the Lloyd and Dottie Foehr Huck Chair in Molecular Biophysics and directs the Center for Structural Oncology (CSO). The CSO aims to combat the molecular culprits that fuel human disease by revealing their hidden vulnerabilities.

Prof. Dr. Frances Ross, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), MA, United States

Prof. Dr. Frances M. Ross works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Materials Science and Engineering. She received her BA in Physics and PhD in Materials Science from Cambridge University, UK, and has worked at A.T.&T. Bell Laboratories, the National Center for Electron Microscopy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. At IBM, she imaged the growth of nanoscale materials, using a microscope with deposition and focused ion beam capabilities, developed liquid cell microscopy for visualizing electrochemical processes, and measured growth and transport properties in a combined focused ion beam-scanning tunneling microscope. At MIT, her research continues to center on nanostructure self-assembly, liquid cell microscopy, epitaxy and electrochemical processes.

Speaker/Presentation

Time in CEST

Prof. Dr. Nigel Browning

Chair Introduction

5:00 – 5:05 pm

Prof. Dr. Nigel Browning

Sampling Strategies for Low-Dose Imaging in Liquids

5:05 – 5:25 pm

Prof. Dr. Niels de Jonge

Prospects and Challenges of Dynamic Liquid Phase Electron Microscopy

5:25 – 5:45 pm

Prof. Dr. Nathan C. Gianneschi

The Four Imaging Modes of Liquid Phase TEM: A Focus on Challenges and Opportunities for Soft Materials

5:45 – 6:05 pm

Prof. Dr. Deb Kelly

Revealing the Inner-Workings of Viruses and Vaccines using High-Resolution Imaging

6:05 – 6:25 pm

Prof. Dr. Frances Ross

Enhancing Liquid Cell Capabilities for Electrochemistry

6:25 – 6:45 pm

6:45 – 6:10 pm

Closing of Webinar
Prof. Dr. Nigel Browning

6:10 – 6:15 pm