People

• Associate Professor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University
• Center Fellow, Precourt Institute for Energy, Stanford University
• Faculty Scientist, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
• Google Scholar

Colin received his BSc in Engineering Physics, and his PhD in Materials Engineering in David Mitlin’s group at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. He received an NSERC scholarship to postdoc for Velimir “Mimo” Radmilovic at Berkeley Lab and Mark Asta at UC Berkeley. He then worked as a Scientist at the National Center for Electron Microscopy (NCEM), part of the Molecular Foundry user facility at Lawrence Berkeley Lab.

Colin Ophus Lab’s research focuses on experimental methods, reconstruction algorithms, and software codes for simulation, analysis, and instrument design of TEM, STEM and 4DSTEM. He was awarded a US DOE Early Career award in 2018, and the Burton Medal from the MSA in 2022. He has published over 210 peer-reviewed publications, and given over 100 invited talks and workshops around the world. Colin advocates for open science and his group develops open-source scientific software such as the py4DSTEM analysis and Prismatic STEM simulation. He is also the editor-in-chief for the interactive web-based scientific journal Elemental Microscopy.

Arthur McCray received his PhD in Applied Physics at Northwestern University, supervised by Amanda Petford-Long. He has experience in Lorentz TEM, magnetic materials, and is currently developing machine learning methods for solving inverse problems in (S)TEM. Arthur is also the lead developer of the pyLorentz software package.

AI-enabled Lorentz microscopy for quantitative imaging of nanoscale magnetic spin textures

Serin earned her PhD in Materials Science and Engineering at MIT, advised by Professor Frances Ross, as an MIT Energy Initiative and MathWorks Fellow. She is one of Northwestern’s 10 Future Leaders in Materials Science. Her research uses in situ electron microscopy to study nanomaterials for sustainability, while her postdoc focuses on enhancing photocatalytic materials’ performance and lifetime with advanced techniques like 4DSTEM. Serin is also active in community building and mentorship, serving on the Early Career Committee of the MSA and mentoring through Stanford’s Science Small Group program.

Temperature dependent nanochemistry and growth kinetics using liquid cell TEM

Dasol earned her PhD in Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell University, advised by Professor David Muller. Her research focused on imaging atomic-scale defects in Li-NMC cathodes using electron ptychography and developing related machine learning tools. At Stanford, her work builds upon this foundation, employing electron ptychography and advanced scanning transmission electron microscopy to investigate battery materials and uncover their underlying mechanisms. Outside of research, Dasol enjoys playing tennis, exploring new cuisines, and discovering local attractions.

Cedric is a PhD student in Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He earned his B.A in Physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and worked with Professor Anatoli Polkovnikov at Boston University proposing a new definition of chaos in both classical and quantum systems. He is currently interested in applying novel machine learning techniques for reconstructing atomic electron tomography (AET) data, and automating data collection for AET.

Defining classical and quantum chaos through adiabatic transformations

Nicholas is a PhD student in Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He earned his BA in Materials Science at Northwestern University. During his time at Northwestern, he worked with Prof Sossina Haile on developing a simulation package for solar thermochemical hydrogen production. Currently, he is interested in polymer systems and using TEM to gain a better understanding of how their microstructure impacts various properties

Henry Bell is a PhD student in the Applied Physics program at Stanford. He completed his BA in Physics at Macalester College and his MSc in Physics at ETH Zurich. His Masters research focused on understanding the nonequilibrium photoexcited states of quantum materials. He is currently working on a computational method to reconstruct the topography/strain of thin films from TEM images and an improved Ptychography algorithm.

Sangjoon, also known as Bob, is a first-year PhD student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He earned his MS in Materials Science and Engineering at Columbia University, where he worked on open-source software with Prof. Simon Billinge. Earlier, he earned a BE in Chemical Engineering at The Cooper Union, with minors in Computer Science and Chemistry, and worked in computational chemistry with Prof. Robert Topper. Bob can be found on GitHub at @bobleesj. His interests include automated workflows for materials imaging and characterization.

Caitlyn Obrero is a PhD student in Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. She earned her BS in Materials Science and Engineering from NC State University, where she developed a broad background in characterizing and studying the properties of materials with a focus on electron microscopy techniques, including SEM and S/TEM. She is currently interested in developing and optimizing in situ STEM techniques to investigate atomic-scale growth mechanisms.

Will is a PhD student in the Materials Science and Engineering 2025 cohort at Stanford University where he is co-advised by Colin Ophus and Andrew Mannix. He received a B.S.E. in Engineering Physics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he worked under Prof. Robert Hovden for 3 years on electron tomography algorithms, custom liquid helium TEM holders, and educational tools. Will is currently working on open source code development for atomic resolution data analysis in 2D and 3D, defect analysis for 2D materials, and scanning tunneling microscopy.

Guoliang Hu is a PhD student in Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University where he is co-advised by Colin Ophus and Yi Cui. He received his BS in Chemical Physics from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). His research focuses on understanding the structural evolution and electronic behaviors of materials using advanced scanning/transmission electron microscopy (S/TEM) techniques. He is particularly interested in exploring two-dimensional materials, energy-related materials, and quantum phenomena through high-resolution imaging and spectroscopy.

Darshan Mali is a master’s student in Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He earned his BTech (Honors)in Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, where he worked with Prof. Tanushree Choudhury on developing single-photon emitters in 2D materials. His current research interests include applying TEM for atomic-scale structure-property analysis.

Yemi is a Master’s student in Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He earned his BSc in Materials Science at Carnegie Mellon University with a minor in Biomedical Engineering. He is interested in machine learning aided characterization efforts for low dimensional materials.

Corrie is a PhD student in Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. She earned her BS in Molecular Engineering (Quantum) at The University of Chicago. As an undergraduate, she worked with Prof. David Awschalom to determine the coherence time of spin-bearing molecular qubits in addition to characterizing the noise environment of nitrogen vacancy centers in delta-doped diamond. Currently, she is interested in using TEM to understand the structure-property relationships of 2-dimensional material heterostructures, more specifically transition metal dichalcogenides, for clean energy technologies.

Peiwen earned his MS in materials science and engineering at Stanford University, and BA in materials science at Northwestern University. He is interested in scientific visualization and using computational imaging methods to study nanomaterials.

Database, Features, and Machine Learning Model to Identify Thermally Driven Metal–Insulator Transition Compounds

Steph received her PhD at Northwestern University in the Dravid Group. During her PhD, she was award an SCGSR from the US Department of Energy for a research internship at Berkeley Lab. She is currently a postdoc working in Colin’s group at Stanford and in Dr Karen Bustillo’s group at Berkeley Lab.

Uncovering the 3D structure of upconverting core–shell nanoparticles with multislice electron ptychography

Georgios Varnavides is a postdoctoral Miller research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is developing new computational imaging modalities to observe structure and function in materials with high spatial resolution.

Iterative phase retrieval algorithms for STEM

Antony is a PhD candidate in Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University coming from the University of Rochester where he earned a BS and MS in Optics. He is interested in computational imaging applied to materials science, scientific communication, and creating novel devices for environmental sensing.

Yi is a PhD candidate in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. His research focuses on the confined synthesis and (S)TEM characterization of ultra thin (nanometer-thick) materials. At COLab, Yi is currently working on machine learning methods for STEM tomography. Yi has been co-organizing the bimonthly Stanford EM-X symposium and the CryoEM FWP meeting since 2022.

Twisted epitaxy of gold nanodisks grown between twisted substrate layers of MoS₂

Annie grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and attended Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, IN where she pursued a degree in chemistry, played tennis, and enjoyed being a manager of the University of Notre Dame football team. She later moved to San Francisco and joined the Materials Science and Engineering Department at Stanford University where she is happy to combine her background in and passion for science and business. Outside of the office, Annie enjoys playing and watching sports, cooking, and traveling.

Chris has worked in MSE Administration for a little over a year, after previous administrative positions at Stanford. Please let him know if he can help with anything.

Andrew is a PhD candidate in the Department of Physics at the University of Oregon, supervised by Ben McMorran. He was awarded an SCGSR fellowship from the US Department of Energy to work on STEM holography-pytchography in Colin’s group at Berkeley Lab and Stanford.

Sam received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, working with Dr Paul Alivisatos, Dr Jim Ciston, and Colin. He is now working on AI-driven materials discovery at ENT$\Delta$LPIC.

Prediction of crystal structure from electron diffraction patterns incorporating multiple scattering

Formerly a PhD student in Lena Kourkoutis’ group at Cornell and a postdoc in Colin Ophus’ group at Berkeley Lab. Now working as a Principle Research Scientist at hBar Instruments.

py4DSTEM: A Software Package for 4DSTEM Data Analysis

Received his PhD in Sarah Haigh’s group at Manchester, and worked a postdoc in Joe Patterson and Colin Ophus’ group. Now returned to silicon valley.

Disentangling multiple scattering with deep learning: application to strain mapping from electron diffraction patterns

Philipp Pelz received Bachelor degrees in Physics (2011) and Informatics (2012), and Master degrees in Applied & Engineering Physics, Materials Science & Chemistry (2013). In 2018 he obtained his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Hamburg & The Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, Germany. Subsequently, he spent three years as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley and the National Center for Electron Microscopy. Since August 2022 he is Tenure-Track Professor for Computational Materials Microscopy at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg.

Solving complex nanostructures with ptychographic atomic electron tomography

Received her PhD in Mary Scott’s group at UC Berkeley after interning in Colin’s group and Mary’s group. Formerly a postdoc in Kwabena Bediako’s group at UC Berkeley, and now working as a postdoc at Los Alamos National Lab.

Tilted fluctuation electron microscopy

Received PhD in Mary Scott’s group at UC Berkeley. Now working as a Research Scientist at Meta.

Automated crystal orientation mapping in py4DSTEM using sparse correlation matching

Received her PhD in Pinshane Huang’s group at UIUC. Worked as postdoc in Xi Jiang’s group and Colin Ophus’ group at Berkeley Lab. Currently a Scientist working at Exponent.

Structural complexities in sodium ion conductive antiperovskite revealed by cryo-TEM

Former intern in Colin Ophus’ group. Currently pursuing a PhD in Mary Scott’s group at UC Berkeley.

Former intern in Colin Ophus’ group. Currently pursuing a PhD in Mary Scott’s group at UC Berkeley.

Prismatic 2.0 – Simulation software for STEM and HRTEM

Graduated PhD program in Andrew Minor’s group at UC Berkeley. Postdoc in Christoph Koch’s group at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. Now a Team Product Owner at Carl Zeiss SMS.

Optimizing disk registration algorithms for nanobeam electron diffraction strain mapping

Received her PhD from Andy Minor’s group and Daryl Chrzan’s group at UC Berkeley. Worked as a Sr. Failure Analysis R&D Engineer at Intel. Currently a Staff Scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Lab.

HAADF imaging of the omega ($\omega$) phase in a gum metal-related alloy

Received his PhD from Pete Nellist’s group at Oxford. Formerly a postdoc in Colin Ophus’ group. Currently working in industry.