The MAS Presidential Service Award honors a member of the MAS for outstanding volunteer service to the Society over a sustained period of time.
Throughout his career, Dr. Leonard’s research has centered on the application of advanced microscopy and microanalysis techniques across a wide range of length scales to address a variety of materials science problems. He began in the lab of the late Dr. Phillip Russell at North Carolina State University, using AFM to investigate the topology of block copolymer films. After earning his Ph.D. in 2002, he worked briefly at IBM, investigating microelectronics packaging applications, before becoming a research assistant in the Atomic Resolution Electron Microscopy Center at North Carolina State University. In 2007, he joined the faculty at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the Materials Science & Engineering Division, where he expanded his expertise in aberration-corrected STEM, EDS, and electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) to understand quantum materials, battery materials, solid oxide fuel cells, solar cell materials, and structural materials for the automotive industry. A key focus of his research has been to establish correlations between material properties and inherent microstructures, including identification of non-equilibrium phases within materials. As needed and appropriate to the research problem at hand, Dr. Leonard utilized alternative microanalytical techniques like EMPA and EBSD (including transmission Kikuchi diffraction – TKD). Most recently, he developed advanced workflows using electron beam induced current (EBIC) and electron beam induced resistance change (EBIRCh) in the FIB-SEM for Microsoft Quantum in Delft, Netherlands, to identify nanoscale sites of dielectric breakdown and interfacial disorder that limit spin-orbit coupling in Microsoft’s novel quantum computing architecture based on Majorana quasiparticles.
Dr. Leonard has been active in the MAS since his graduate school days and has held various leadership positions within the Society. He served as the MAS Physical Science Director from 2019–2021 and was the MAS Co-Chair for the Microscopy & Microanalysis conference Executive Program Committee in 2015. He sat on the Editorial Board for the Microscopy and Microanalysis journal from 2017–2023. In his local community, he has been an integral part of the Appalachian Regional Microscopy Society (AReMS), serving as President (2012–2014) and Webmaster (2008–2014). He is the recipient of the MSA Morton D. Maser Distinguished Service Award.