Executive Council
The Executive Council consists of the elected representatives of the membership. According to the by-laws (Jan 2020 revision), “The Executive Council shall be composed of eleven (11) members: six Directors, one Commercial Director, and the following officers, the President, the President-Elect or Past-President, the Secretary, and the Treasurer.”
President (2022 – 2024)
Patrick Camus
Retired
Pen Argyl, PA 18072
Email: president -at- the-mas.org
Patrick received a BS in 1981 (University of Pittsburgh) and a Ph.D. in 1986 (University of Pittsburgh), all in Materials Science and Engineering. He joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Oak Ridge, TN) as a post-doctoral scholar from 1986-1988. He worked at NBS/NIST (Gaithersburg, MD) from 1988-1990, moved to University of Wisconsin-Madison as Research Faculty with Thomas Kelly from 1990-1997 developing the hardware for the LEAP. He worked for NORAN Instruments, now Thermo Fisher Scientific, as Applications Scientist for Microanalysis from 1997-2013 in Madison, WI. He moved to EDAX (Mahwah, NJ) in 2013, starting as an Innovation Engineer and finishing as the Director of Research and Engineering. He received the Erwin Mueller Young Scientist Award in 1988 from IFES. He has helped organize 3 IFES meetings and was the Sponsorship Director of IUMAS-6. Patrick had vast experience in applying APFIM to materials characterization of phase transformations on the nanometer scale. He then moved into EDS, WDS, and EBSD to assist customers with microanalysis characterization on a wide variety of inorganic materials. He now is retired and spends his time volunteering for organizations like MAS.
President-Elect (2023 – 2024)
Andy Herzing
NIST
Andrew Herzing is a materials research engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, MD. He received his Ph.D. from Lehigh University in 2007 under the supervision of Christopher Kiely. Andrew’s primary research interest is the development and application of advanced transmission electron microscopy techniques for materials characterization. He is currently focused on 4D-STEM of characterization of organic semiconductors and electron tomography of complex semiconductor device architectures.
Secretary (2023 – 2025)
Owen K. Neill
Owen Neill holds a B.A. in Geology from Amherst College, a M.Sc. in Geology & Geophysics from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and a Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He spent four years as a research associate at Washington State University’s Peter Hooper GeoAnalytical Lab, and has been the manager of the Robert B. Mitchell Electron Microbeam Analysis Lab at the University of Michigan since 2017.
Treasurer (2021 – 2024)
Dave Tomlin
Senior Scientist
Azimuth Corporation
7427 Jordan Road
Lewisburg, OH 45338
E-mail: treasurer – at – the-mas.org
Dave Tomlin holds a BS in Chemistry (1985) and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry (1990) from Miami University, and was previously an NRC post-doctoral associate at the Naval Research Laboratory (1990-93). He is a Senior Scientist (1995-present) with Azimuth Corporation at the Air Force Research Laboratory, Materials and Manufacturing Directorate (AFRL/RXAPA). His research interests are focused on utilizing optical, electron, and ion microscopes to investigate failures in semiconductor and electro-optic devices.
Commercial Director (2023 – 2025)
Steve Seddio
Applications Scientist
Thermo Fisher Scientific
5225 Verona Rd.
Fitchburg, WI 53711
Email: stephen.seddio-at-
Steve has been a member of the MAS since 2011. He received his B.A. Degree (2007) in Planetary Sciences from the University of Rochester and his M.A. and Ph.D. (2013) in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Washington University in St. Louis. After a brief stint of crater counting on Ganymede, one of Jupiter’s moons, and Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, his research interests shifted a bit closer to home and has mostly focused on studying evolved lunar lithologies using X-ray microanalysis. His favorite element is zirconium.
Steve is currently the WDS and EDS Product Specialist for Thermo Fisher Scientific in Madison, WI and helps customers optimize their analysis.
Third Year Directors (2022 – 2024)
Assel Aitkaliyeva
Assistant Professor Nuclear Engineering Program
Department of Materials Science & Engineering
University of Florida
100 Rhines Hall
Gainesville, FL 32611
Email: aitkaliyeva -at- mse.ufl.edu
Thomas Lam
Physical Scientist
Smithsonian Institution
4210 Silver Hill Rd.
Suitland, MD 20746
Email: LamT -at- SI.edu
Thomas joined MAS in 2014. Thomas has a BS (in 2004) and MS (in 2007) in Ceramic Engineering from Alfred University. He received a PhD (in 2011) in Ceramics from Alfred University. During his PhD, Thomas also worked at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (2008-2011). After his PhD, Thomas completed a postdoc at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). At NIST, Thomas worked on projects developing methodologies to visualize and characterize 3D nanostructures. Thomas was a Sr. Research Specialist at the Electron Microscopy Core Facility at the University of Missouri from 2014-2015. At the University of Missouri, he worked with the students and faculty to apply electron microscopy (SEM, SEM EDS, Electron Beam Lithography, TEM, STEM EDS, STEM EELS and EFTEM) research to their projects. Thomas joined the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute (MCI) in 2016. As a Physical Scientist, he applies his knowledge of material science and characterization skills of microscopy, SEM-EDS, cathodoluminescence (CL), or X-ray fluorescence (XRF) to contribute to the MCI Technical Studies team. Thomas has been involved with co-organizing and lead organizing cultural heritage topic symposiums for the Microscopy and Microanalysis Meetings in 2018 and 2021.
Second Year Directors (2023 – 2025)
Katherine (Kate) Burgess
U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
Washington, District of Columbia
Kate Burgess is a geologist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in the Nanoscale Materials Section, which she joined first as a post-doc in 2014 before converting to an employee. She obtained her PhD in Geological Sciences from Brown University and was a post-doc at University of Hawaii prior to coming to NRL.
Her work focuses on planetary materials and using electron microscopy and nanoscale observations to understand Solar System evolution and processes.
Jordan Hachtel
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge, TN 37830
Jordan is a Staff Scientist at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He began his microscopy career at ORNL in 2012 while a graduate student in the Department of Physics at Vanderbilt University. After graduating in 2016, he came to ORNL officially as a postdoc, and converted to a staff scientist at ORNL in 2019.
He has always focused on spectroscopy. First with core-loss electron energy-loss spectroscopy in semiconductor gate-stacks, then on the optical properties of complex plasmonic systems with cathodoluminescence spectroscopy. Recently, his work has been centered on ultra-low-loss excitations in monochromated EELS, where he strives to develop advanced experimental and data-analysis techniques and to expand the breadth of applications of monochromated EELS into quantum materials, power electronics, and biology.
First Year Directors (2024 – 2026)
Megan E. Holtz
Assistant Professor, Metallurgical and Materials Engineering
Colorado School of Mines
Golden, CO
Email: mholtz -at- mines.edu
Megan Holtz is an assistant professor at the Colorado School of Mines, where she develops scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) techniques and grows thin film oxide materials, to understand how local crystal structures at interfaces impacts properties for energy and functional materials. Her prior experience was as an NRC Postdoctoral Associate in the Materials Measurement Laboratory at NIST, and postdoctoral and graduate work at Cornell University. During these appointments she has worked on STEM techniques and oxide molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) to investigate the fundamental properties of ferroelectric and multiferroic interfaces, as well as design materials with properties which bring them closer to device applications. She also developed electrochemical liquid cell STEM measurements to observe battery and fuel cell components operating in situ. She obtained her B.S. degree in Physics from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. She has authored and co-authored 55 papers, 8 of which have received over 100 citations.
Jessica Riesterer
Scientist, CEDAR, OHSU Knight Cancer Institute, School of Medicine
Oregon Health & Science University
Email: riesterj -at- ohsu.edu
Jessica Riesterer is a staff scientist at Oregon Health & Science University studying nanoscale behavior of cancer using electron microscopy. She has been a MAS member since graduate school at the University of Minnesota (20 years!), where she heavily used EDX and EBSD in combination with AFM & FIB-SEM to study traditional ceramics. Since then, Jessica has worked on novel technique, applications, and instrumentation development with respect to a large range of materials in her roles at EMPA-Thun, Switzerland, Idaho National Laboratory, and FEI Company/Thermo Fisher Scientific. Her current interest is to develop microanalysis workflows for the life science community.