Dr Demie Kepaptsoglou receives Award for Innovation in Applied Microscopy for Engineering, Physical and Material Sciences (EPMS)

We are very pleased to announce Dr Demie Kepaptsoglou as winner of the RMS Award for Innovation in Applied Microscopy for Engineering, Physical and Material Sciences (EPMS).

Demie is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Physics, Engineering and Technology at the University of York, and also the Deputy Director of SuperSTEM, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) National Research Facility for Advanced Electron Microscopy. She has made outstanding contributions to physics and materials science using electron microscopy.

In the last few years Demie has created an entirely new field of research in the form of magnon spectroscopy in the scanning transmission electron microscope. She launched this new direction in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic through an ambitious EPSRC New Horizons project, with the aim of developing electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) at ultrahigh energy resolution (<10 meV) to detect and spatially resolve these quasiparticles describing the collective excitations of the spin structure of magnetic solids.

Demie has spearheaded collaborations in theoretical and computational work, successfully making use of the Royal Society’s International Exchanges scheme to establish work with Prof. Ján Rusz’s group at Uppsala University in Sweden. This approach led to now-seminal theoretical papers.

She has worked exhaustively to develop acquisition and data processing procedures to produce convincing spectral peaks as well as dispersion curves matching calculated response characteristics and even demonstrated the potential for spatially resolved mapping.

Demie’s collaborative work spans a vast range of other applications across chemistry, physics, engineering materials science, and earth science. Remarkably, she has accomplished these feats while also teaching at York, supervising PhDs, lecturing at international training schools, leading the SuperSTEM Daresbury Lab open day outreach activities (5,000 site visitors), and organising symposia and conferences.