PNNL

Juan Carlos Idrobo, a joint appointee with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and a University of Washington (UW) professor, was named a Microscopy Society of America (MSA) Fellow. Idrobo joins three other honorees in the 2023 fellows class. The four new fellows will be honored at the Microscopy & Microanalysis 2023 meeting in July.

"I'm thrilled to become an MSA Fellow," said Idrobo. "Throughout my career, I've been actively involved with MSA. It has served as an invaluable platform for connecting with other microscopists who work on diverse problems, allowing me to gain fresh insights and integrate them into my research, particularly focusing on advancing the field of electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS)."

Originally founded in 1942 as the Electron Microscope Society of America, the MSA focuses on the microscopy and related techniques used across scientific disciplines. The MSA is a “collaborative community dedicated to fostering research, innovation, advancement, and promotion of microscopy.” It hosts annual meetings, has local chapters, and publishes technical journals.

Each year, the MSA inducts senior society members who have made significant contributions to the microscopy community as MSA Fellows. This recognition considers both technical achievement and broader service to the scientific community. Idrobo was selected “for sustained leadership in developing and advancing novel EELS methods for materials science.”

Idrobo is currently an associate professor of materials science and engineering at UW and a joint appointee at PNNL. His work centers on developing analytical electron microscopy techniques to study the structure and properties of materials. He specifically works with monochromated and aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy.

Before his move to the UW and PNNL, Idrobo was a senior staff scientist and a group leader at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He obtained his PhD from the University of California, Davis, his MS from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and his BS from Universidad de Los Andes, all of which are in physics.