EM Academy

Liam has been working in the field of electron microscopy for the past 15 years. He started his career as a Ph.D. student at Imperial College London studying oxide thin films using aberration-corrected (S)TEM and monochromated EELS. After completing his Ph.D., he worked as a post-doctoral research assistant in advanced EM, working on the structural and chemical characterization of materials across a number of projects, including nanoparticle toxicology, ferroelectrics, nanoparticle catalysts, and solid oxide fuel cells. In 2012, Dr. Spillane joined Gatan, initially working with the UK sales & service group for several years. He relocated to Gatan Headquarters in Pleasanton, CA, in 2018, where he is currently the application scientist for Gatan’s EELS, EFTEM, and STEM products.

Andrew is an Application Scientist at Gatan supporting the analytical product lines. He started his career in Electron Microscopy at APTech, developing new cathodes and electron gun modules for SEMs, TEMs, and plasma generation systems. Andrew Earned his Ph. D. from the University of California, Davis, working under Dr. Klaus van Benthem. After graduating, he pursued a Post-Doctoral appointment at the Molecular Foundry before returning to UC Davis. Prior to starting at Gatan, Andrew served as the Technical Director of AMCaT, the Materials Characterization Facility at UC Davis. Andrew has over 16 years of experience applying TEM, aberration-corrected STEM, EELS, EDS, FIB, and SEM to a broad range of materials.

Ray has been working in the field of electron microscopy for the past 25 years. He started his career as a Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, studying surface physics using a specially designed UHV TEM. He moved to Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque, NM working to understand morphological instabilities in III-V and group-IV semiconductors. Ray rejoined the University of Illinois in 1997 as a staff scientist and laboratory manager for the TEM operations of the Center for Microanalysis of Materials. Since 2005, Dr. Twesten has been with Gatan in Pleasanton, CA, first with the EELS R&D group and later as the EELS product development group manager. Currently, he is the product manager for Gatan’s EELS, EFTEM, and STEM products.