Virtual RMS AFM & SPM Meeting 2020

Nina Balke

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Nina Balke, received her Ph.D in Materials Sciences from the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, in 2006. After being a Feodor-Lynen fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt foundation at the University of California in Berkeley she became a research staff at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2010. She is specialized in nanoscale characterization of electromechanical effects and electro-chemo-mechanical coupling using scanning probe microscopy in oxides and vdW layered materials. Her scientific focus includes ferroelectrics, dielectrics, and energy storage materials as well as in-situ characterization of solid-liquid interfaces.

---

Simon Connell

University of Leeds

Dr Simon Connell is an Associate Professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leeds. After graduating with a PhD in Biophysics in 1999, he joined Leeds in 2001, and since 2005 has managed a cross-faculty EPSRC supported AFM facility. He studies a wide range of systems, with a focus on the structure, dynamics and nanomechanics of soft matter and biological systems. His main research focus is on lipid membrane phase morphology and dynamics, but with the versatility of AFM comes the opportunity to study a diverse array of topics, and current research includes blood clot structure and mechanics, hydrogels and microgels, nanotribology, high speed imaging of polymer dynamics, nanomechanical vs temperature analysis of complex blends of materials in manufactured products and food, and particle adhesion and fragmentation of samples ranging from drug crystals to meteoroids.

---

Alex Dazzi

Université Paris-Sud

Alexandre Dazzi is a tenured Professor of physics at Université Paris-Sud and works in the Laboratoire de Chimie Physique. Alexandre does research focused on the infrared domain and teaches Nanoscience at the Université Paris-Sud/ Paris-Saclay. He has a physics background with a focus on optics and near-field techniques. He has an undergraduate degree in material science and obtained his Ph.D. in 1998 at the Université de Bourgogne. In 2000, Alexandre took an associate professor position at the CLIO FEL facility, where he worked on near-field techniques in the infrared. After inventing and developing the AFM-IR technique, Alexander has worked to improved AFM-IR instrumentation and has focused heavily on the study of biomolecule production by microorganisms. Alexandre has also developed a user facility based on AFM-IR systems and now collaborate with many groups in the Université Paris-Sud in different domain like astrophysics, culture heritage, polymer science, microbiology.

He was the 2009 laureate for instrumentation prize from the Societé Francaise Division de Chimie Physique.  He was also associated with R&D 100 awards in 2010 and the Microscopy Today 2011 Innovation Award for the nanoIR^TM and received the Ernst Abbe Award in 2014 from the New York Microscopical Society.

---

Takeshi Fukuma

Kanazawa University

Professor Takeshi Fukuma obtained his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Kyoto University in 2003. Since then, he worked at Kyoto University as a postdoc, at Trinity College Dublin as a senior scientist, and at Kanazawa University as an associate professor. Since 2012, he has been a professor at Department of Electrical Engineering at Kanazawa University. Since 2017, he has also been the director of Nano Life Science Institute (WPI-NanoLSI) at Kanazawa University. His research interests include development of in-liquid atomic force microscopy (AFM) techniques and their applications to nanoscale studies on various phenomena at solid-liquid interfaces. In particular, he is well known for his work on the development of in-liquid frequency modulation AFM and three-dimensional AFM.

---

Lorena Redondo-Morata

Inserm

Lorena carried her PhD in the Physical Chemistry department of the University of Barcelona, concomitantly with the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC). Her PhD was devoted to the study of nanomechanics of lipid bilayers mainly using atomic force microscopy (AFM)-based force spectroscopy. She obtained her PhD in 2012 under the supervision of Prof. Fausto Sanz. In 2013, she joined as a postdoctoral fellow to the Simon Scheuring’s laboratory at the Institute de la Santé et la Recherche Médicale (Inserm) in Marseille, France. There, she learnt High-Speed AFM to study dynamic remodeling of biomembranes. She was awarded in 2016 by the Spanish Biophysical Society with the Young Researcher Prize. In 2018 she obtained an Inserm tenure researcher position in the Institut Pasteur in Lille, France. At the present, she continues her studies devoted to the mechanics and dynamics of cell membrane remodeling using AFM and correlative microscopies. One of her main current research axes is the study of the dynamics of synaptic vesicle transmission.

---

Kristina Rusimova

University of Bath, UK

Dr. Kristina Rusimova received an MSci in Physics with Nanotechnology from the University of Birmingham (UK) in 2012, followed by a PhD in atomic manipulation with the scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) from the University of Bath (UK) in 2016. Following a short postdoctoral position in photonics, she joined the Department of Physics at the University of Bath as an independent Prize Fellow in 2018 and as a tenured Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in 2021. In 2022 she was part of the team awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Faraday Division Horizon Prize for the discovery of chiroptical harmonic scattering. Her work is now focused on looking for new understanding of the nanoscale physical processes that underpin light emission and single molecule reactions induced by the tip of an STM.

---

Steven Schofield

University College London

Steven is an Associate Professor in Condensed Matter Physics at University College London. His research is focused on understanding and controlling the fundamental quantum properties of matter at the atomic scale for potential applications in classical and quantum information processing. His research group uses atomic-scale fabrication and cryogenic-temperature, ultrahigh-vacuum scanning tunnelling microscopy and spectroscopy to create and investigate nanostructures in semiconductor and two-dimensional materials.  Often these measurements are made in conjunction with complementary techniques including momentum-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy and quantum simulation. Steven is a former chair of the Nanoscale Physics and Technology group of the Institute of Physics (2012-2017), and is the current Nanometer Structures Division representative for the UK to the International Union for Vacuum Science Techniques and Applications (IUVSTA).

---

Gijs Wuite

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Prof. Gijs Wuite obtained his PhD in biophysics in 2000. Since 2001 he leads his own group at the VU University Amsterdam and in 2009 was appointed to full professor. In his research he has successfully applied quantitative physical tools to investigate fundamental problems in biology, and to search for the unification of apparently unrelated biological phenomena. Moreover, he has been at the front of recent new and fast developments of biophysical techniques that have enabled visualization, manipulation and control of complex biological reactions. In 2014 he co-founded LUMICKS, a fast growing company specialized in dynamics single molecule instruments and in 2018 he won the Dutch Physics Valorisation prize & in 2019 the Amsterdam Impact Award, for successfully launching of this company.

---