Professor James LeBeau Honored with 2013 KFJ Heinrich Award

Prof. James LeBeau has been awarded the Microanalysis Society’s K.F.J Heinrich Award to be presented at the 2013 Microscopy and Microanalysis meeting in Indianapolis on August 5, 2013. The K.F.J Heinrich Award is presented annually to an outstanding young scientist not yet 40 years-old in the year of the award for distinguished contributions to the field of microanalysis. He was selected for the award, in part, because of his seminal work on making scanning transmission electron microscopy rigorously quantitative.

James earned his B.S. in Materials Science & Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2006. Working with Prof. Susanne Stemmer, he received his Ph. D. from the University of California Santa Barbara in 2010. Follow that, he joined North Carolina State University’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering as a faculty member in January 2011. His research group focuses on applying and developing transmission electron microscopy techniques to determine the atomic structure and chemistry of material defects. Having shown that HAADF images from experiment agree quantitatively with simulations, the LeBeau group is interested in exploring details in the image intensities to provide information about materials without the need for calibration standards. The materials currently being investigated cover a range of topics including advanced thermoelectrics, topological insulators, and materials for high temperature applications.

He has been honored with numerous awards for his microanalysis technique development efforts. He was presented a MAS Distinguished Scholar award and the MAS Birks Award for Best Contributed Paper at the 2008 M&M in Albuquerque, NM. In 2010, he received the Oak Ridge Associated Universities Ralph E. Powe Junior faculty award, and the Appalachian Regional Microscopy Society’s Young Investigator Award in 2012. Since 2006, he has co-authored 26 journal articles and has given numerous invited talks, both in the United States and around the world.