David A. Muller, the Samuel B. Eckert Professor of Engineering in Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University, has been honored with two prestigious awards for his achievements in microscopy: the 2023 John M. Cowley Medal from the International Federation of Societies for Microscopy and the 2024 Joseph F. Keithley Award for Advances in Measurement Science from the American Physical Society.

The John M. Cowley Medal is the highest award bestowed by the International Federation of Societies for Microscopy and is awarded only once every four years to recognize the outstanding contributions of individual scientists and their achievements in diffraction physics and microscopy.

Muller, who is the director of the Electron Microscopy Facility at PARADIM, and co-director of the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science, has focused his research on understanding the behavior of materials and devices at the atomic scale, with an emphasis on renewable energy applications. His group’s inventions and advances in new microscopy technology had already been recognized by Guinness World Records for the highest resolution microscope.

“By using these unique instruments, placed in specially designed and environmentally isolated rooms,” Muller said, “my group explores the atomic-scale chemistry, structure and bonding that occurs inside objects as diverse as transistors, turbine blades, fuel cells and batteries. The impact of this research on devices, both large and small, has the potential to be significant.”

Muller received The Joseph F. Keithley Award “For pioneering a new generation of electron detectors and phase-sensitive reconstruction algorithms leading to significant advances in the resolution and capabilities of electron microscopes.” This award is made annually to one or a few individuals working in the area of sensitive and precision instrument development and measurement techniques for outstanding advances in measurement science or products that impact the physics community by providing better measurements.

“Previous electron microscopes allowed us to see atoms, but only just barely. Our work over the past 15 years has been to improve the resolution of the electron microscope to be about tenth of the distance between neighboring atoms. That has allowed us to not only see where the atom’s nucleus is, but also how it’s wobbling around,” said Muller. “I am very honored to have received both of these prestigious awards.”