2018 Richard D. Leapman

Richard Leapman received his education at Peterhouse, Cambridge University, UK, where he obtained a B.A. in Natural Sciences, followed by a Ph.D. in physics from the Cavendish Laboratory under the supervision of Prof. Vernon Ellis Cosslett. He then trained as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford, and also under the mentorship of Prof. John Silcox in the Department of Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University, where he contributed to the development of electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) for the nanoscale characterization of materials. Dr. Leapman subsequently moved to the National Institutes of Health to develop methods that combined scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and EELS for analyzing the organization and composition of cells and supramolecular assemblies. More recently, his group has developed techniques based on STEM tomography for imaging the 3D ultrastructure of cells, as well as serial block face SEM approaches for determining nanoscale tissue architecture. Dr. Leapman received the Presidential Science Award from the Microbeam Analysis Society and was elected a Fellow of the Microscopy Society of America in 2011. He is currently an Editor of the Journal of Microscopy, a member of the editorial boards of other microscopy and nanotechnology journals, and has participated on national scientific advisory committees, including the one for the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory. Since 2006, Dr. Leapman has served as the Scientific Director of the intramural program of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, NIH, where he also heads the Laboratory of Cellular Imaging and Macromolecular Biophysics.