Academic Résumé

Professional Timeline

What I’ve done since graduating from college.

Metallurgical simulation at Materialprüfungsanstalt Stuttgart

My role at MPA Stuttgart was my first direct experience with numerical simulation. Here, I helped to develop and fine-tune a strain hardening model for multiphysics finite element simulation of friction stir welding.

Failure analysis at Apple Inc.

In Apple’s product design materials group, I worked on a wide variety of issues involving fundamental materials science affecting all Apple products. Among other responsibilities, the PD Materials group develops innately colored metalloceramic coatings for cosmetic surfaces of Apple products. It was here where I was introduced to microanalysis techniques - personally making heavy use of focused ion beam (FIB) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) - and often hiring external CROs to perform transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS). I became interested in microscopy and scientific imaging, and decided to pursue a PhD to learn more.

PhD in Materials Science & Engineering at UT Austin

I began studying under Professor Jamie H. Warner at the University of Texas at Austin. Jamie had just moved to UT from Oxford, where he’d worked for more than 10 years. Kevin Matthews and I were his first two students in the US. Together, we played a big part in getting the new lab up and running. I defended my thesis and earned my PhD in 2025.

Research and Career Interests

My pre-PhD background pushed me to develop and apply computational methods for transmission electron microscopes; however, my career and research interests are by no means limited to microscopes. To learn more, please refer to my blog post on why I chose to get a PhD and how I wish to use it.

PhD Research

In the fast-paced world of corporate R&D, it’s difficult to find positions that allow for long-term development of difficult skills. Graduate school gave me a chance to reset, re-focus on computation and difficult experimental methods, and take the time to develop the laboratory and computational skills needed to contribute to science in 2026.

Electron tomography

Electron tomography allows one-of-a-kind samples to be studied in 3D at very high resolution. In my PhD, I studied polyamide membranes for reverse osmosis using high angle annular darkfield scanning transmission electron microscopy (HAADF-STEM). When an hyperspectral electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) image is acquired in the exact same area as the tomography tilt series, it becomes possible to estimate the three-dimensional density distribution of the sample.

Single particle analysis

Single particle analysis (SPA) is a method, originally developed for structural biology, that computes 3D reconstructions from large numbers of randomly-oriented, structurally-similar particles. In materials science, electron microscopy is typically used to study defects, interfaces, or other sui generis structures, and so structural similarity typically cannot be assumed. By studying a highly stable class of octahedral rhenium chalcogenide clusters, I was able to demonstrate that SPA can be applied to the inorganic sciences at true atomic resolution.

Electron microscopy simulation

Many scientific experiments seek to push the limits of what can be measured. If a signal was easy to measure, it probably would have been measured long ago, by someone else. At this limit simulation becomes essential to validate the correctness of results and understand the limits what can be learned from a proposed experiment.

Electron energy loss spectroscopy

Electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) is a microanalytical technique that can measure chemical properties of materials at high sensitivity and high resolution. Equipped with an experimental EELS detector, our group researched new methods of processing EELS data to improve the microstructural understanding of separation membranes.