Plenary Session:

Tuesday, 21 March 2023, 9:00 am – 11:45 am

Evgeny Blokhin

Materials Platform for Data Science, Estonia, and Tilde Materials Informatics, Germany

Evgeny received his degree in Quantum Chemistry at the St. Petersburg State University, Russia, in 2009, followed by a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, Stuttgart, Germany. He spent about two years in a post-doctoral position, working as the Lead Software Developer on the collaboration of Fritz Haber Institute & Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, titled “NoMaD: Novel Materials Discovery”. He is currently the Director and Founder of Materials Platform for Data Science, a scientific consulting and sales firm, and is also a consultant for Tilde Materials Informatics in Munich, Germany, working on computational materials science and software development.

His scientific publications include:

• Andersen, Armiento, Blokhin, et al., OPTIMADE, an API for exchanging materials data, Nature Scientific Data, 8, 217 (2021)
• Blokhin, Villars, The PAULING FILE Project and Materials Platform for Data Science: From Big Data Toward Materials Genome. In: Andreoni, Yip, Handbook of Materials Modeling, Springer (2018)
• Blokhin, Evarestov, Gryaznov, Kotomin, Maier, Theoretical modeling of antiferrodistortive phase transition for SrTiO₃ ultrathin films, Phys. Rev. B 88, 241407 (2013)

Evgeny is multilingual and speaks German, French, Russian, Turkish, and English.

Plenary Abstract: Materials Data Curation and Delivery at Scale: Materials Platform for Data Science

Paul R. Bartholomew

Quinnipiac University, Superb LLC

Dr. Bartholomew received his B.S. in geology from the University of Minnesota, after which he completed a field-based M.S. and an experimental Ph.D., both at the University of British Columbia. Following his graduate work, he managed geoscience analytical facilities, at SUNY Stony Brook and at Yale. Today he teaches Earth Science part-time at Quinnipiac University and serves as chief scientist for his own geoscience technologies company, Superb LLC. His research interests have explored the mineralogy of metamorphosed mineral deposits including the discovery of 2 new minerals which he named for his undergraduate mineralogy professor, Dr. Tibor Zoltai, and his graduate advisor, Dr. Hugh Greenwood. For the past 15 years, however, his research has increasingly focused on optimizing Raman spectroscopy for routine mineral identification with the objective of enabling Raman to become a universally adopted technology within the geoscience community. The products of this work include 3 patents for Raman technologies. He is presently working with ICDD to establish a Raman reference spectral library for routine mineral identification.

Plenary Abstract: Mainstreaming Raman Spectroscopy for Mineral Identification

Bryan Wheaton

Principal Research Scientist
Corning Incorporated, Painted Post, NY

Dr. Wheaton joined Corning Incorporated in 1983 after receiving an A.A.S. degree in Chemical Technology. He later received his B.S. degree in Ceramic Engineering and Ph.D. in Glass Science from Alfred University. Bryan is currently a Principal Research Scientist within the Characterization Sciences Directorate at Corning Incorporated in Painted Post, NY. He has worked at Corning his entire 39 year professional career, holding various technical and functional roles in the characterization field. Bryan was the technical leader and supervisor of the x-ray diffraction laboratory for more than 25 years, responsible for materials understanding through characterization methods development and deployment to projects in Science and Technology and business units. He has also been the functional manager of a diverse group of 30 scientists and technicians in the fields of microscopy, surface science and structure analysis techniques. Bryan’s main technical focus has been studying phase assemblage and microstructure of ceramic and glass-ceramic materials through the use of x-ray diffraction, scanning and transmission electron diffraction, and electron backscattered diffraction analysis.

Plenary Abstract: Industrial Application of XRD

Keynote Presentation:

Technical Committee Meeting
Thursday, 23 March
9:30 am – 12:30 pm

Dr. Ute Kolb

Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and Technical University Darmstadt, Germany

Prof. Ute Kolb is known as the inventor of an approach for crystal structure analysis using three dimensional electron diffraction. In 1997, she started her work on the development of an efficient, reliable and easy method for structure analysis of nano crystals. Ten years later, in 2007 the method “automated electron diffraction tomography (ADT)” was born in her group at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and she published the first ab-initio crystal structure solution from a nano crystal. In 2021 she received the Gjonnés medal from the CEC “Electron crystallography of the IUCr for her scientific work. Today, she is affiliated at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz as the head of the Center for high resolution electron microscopy (EMC-M) as well as the Technical University Darmstadt. She runs two scientific groups focusing on the optimization of the methods ADT and FAST-ADT using in total 3 TEMs with specialized settings for inorganic and organic as well as highly beam sensitive materials like solvates. Three dimensional electron diffraction (3DED), which was selected as the official term for all electron diffraction tomography methods, is nowadays an accepted approach and has been applied for solving crystal structures of a large variety of materials as well as crystallographic challenging problems.

Abstract: Crystal Structure Solution at The Nanoscale – The Power of Electron Diffraction