Electron Microscopy Spring School 2026

Louie Aspinall

University of Leeds

Louie carried out his PhD in TEM characterisation of DNA binding proteins at the University of Glasgow, where he found his love for TEM. He is currently working as a Technician in Electron Microscopy at the University of Leeds. He frequents in both negative stain TEM and cryoEM, and has a particular interest in methods development.

Rik Brydson

RMS Honorary Secretary Physical Science, University of Leeds

Rik holds a chair in the Institute for Materials Research (IMR) in the School of Process Environmental and Materials Engineering at the University of Leeds. He heads the NanoCharacterisation group based around the Leeds Electron Microscopy and Spectroscopy (LEMAS) centre which is shared between Materials and Earth Sciences and also acts as an EPSRC facility for external UK researchers. He has a general research interest in high spatial resolution chemical analysis in nanostructured materials, and has a current research h index of 32 with over 25 years research experience in nanomaterials characterisation. He has managed extensive national and international collaborations including being current consortium leader for the UK National Facility for Aberration corrected Electron Microscopy, SuperSTEM at Daresbury. 

Rik is also on the Management Board of the European Microscopy Society. He has written an RMS Handbook on Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy (Bios /Taylor and Francis 2001), has co-written a book on “Nanoscale Science and Technology" (Wiley 2005), edited a recent RMS book on Analytical Aberration-corrected Transmission Electron Microscopy with Wiley and has contributed a number of other chapters in specialist books on electron microscopy by other professional bodies covering Physics, Chemistry and Engineering. In recent years his research interests have focused on applying high spatial resolution characterisation methods (particularly TEM and EELS) to the nanochemical analysis of softer, more radiation sensitive materials.

John Harrington

University of Leeds

John Harrington is the Facility Manager of the Leeds Electron Microscopy and Spectroscopy centre (LEMAS) in the faculty of Engineering.  He has taught on the EM school for many years, firstly as a technician and then as an Experimental Officer.  He has over 30 years of EM experience and expertise particularly in SEM, EDX and FIB-SEM dual beam technologies.

Nicole Hondow

University of Leeds

Nicole is an Associate Professor in the area of Materials Characterisation at the University of Leeds. Prior to this she completed undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Chemistry at The University of Western Australia, and undertook postdoctoral research University of Leeds in the electron microscopy of materials relevant to catalysis and toxicology. Nicole’s current research uses analytical electron microscopy in the examination and quantification of nanomaterials in complex matrices. She is particularly interested in applying cryogenic approaches to capture nano- and soft-materials in the native state, with analysis by analytical (S)TEM and FIB-SEM.

Tom O'Sullivan

University of Leeds

I’m Tom, a cryo correlative light and electron microscopy (CLEM) scientist at Leeds University. Cryo-EM is conventionally used to look at single, isolated and purified particles such as protein or viruses. However, whilst single particle experiments are a powerful tool for structural biology, it fails to show how proteins are structured or behave in their cellular environment.

However, visualising structures within tissue or cells can be tough. Importantly, structures are sporadic within tissue, and high resolution electron imaging requires a small field of view. My job is to use cryo CLEM workflows to identify and isolate regions of interest for cryo-electron tomography.
 

Zabeada Aslam

University of Leeds

After completing my PhD in 2006 investigating the growth mechanisms of carbon nanotubes, I worked as a Research Fellow on the IMPRESS Project at Leeds University investigating the solidification of intermetallic materials for advanced catalysts.  I then moved to Oxford University as an ERC post-doctoral research fellow investigating the mechanical and electrical properties of doped multi-walled carbon nanotubes using an in-situ TEM holder. I am currently providing TEM support to students and researchers at LEMAS, University of Leeds.

Andy Brown

University of Leeds, UK

Andy is a Professor in the School of Chemical and Process Engineering at the University of Leeds and is currently the RMS Honorary Secretary, Physical Sciences.  Andy has a background in the application of analytical transmission electron microscopy to the characterization of materials, focusing more recently on nanoparticles and beam sensitive materials.

Sandra Piazolo

University of Leeds, UK

Sandra Piazolo is Professor of Structural Geology and Tectonics at the University of Leeds. She was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship where she applied ‘Quantification of Microstructures applying EBSD and in-situ experiments on rocks and metals: Focus on deformation mechanisms and annealing microstructures’ at the University of Liverpool.  In 2004 she moved to become Senior Lecturer to Professor Structural Geology and Tectonics, SU, in Sweden in the establishment of Microdynamic Laboratory – Experiments, Nature and Numerical modelling. In 2010 she moved to the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Macquarie University, Australia where she used EBSD, TKD, Atomprobe Tomography combined with numerical simulations to understand deformation and reaction processes at a fundamental level.