David Muller

David Muller is the Samuel B. Eckert Professor of Engineering in the School of Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University and the co-director of the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science. His current research interests include the atomic-scale characterization and control of matter for applications in energy storage and conversion, exploring new phases of two-dimensional materials that cannot exist in the bulk, and developing a new generation of probability-current detectors and algorithms for measuring physical properties in an electron microscope.

Muller is a graduate of the University of Sydney and received a Ph.D. from Cornell University in the field of Physics. As a scientist at Bell Labs, he applied his research on imaging single atoms and atomic-scale spectroscopy to determine the physical limits on how small a transistor can be made. His work, more generally, has focused on the development of scanning transmission electron microscopy and spectroscopy as quantitative tools for atomic-resolution materials analysis and its application to unraveling connections between electronic-structure changes on the atomic scale and the macroscopic behavior of materials. This includes systems as diverse as fuel cells, batteries, turbine blades, and two-dimensional superconductors.

Muller is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Microscopy Society of America and the recipient of the DGE’s Ernst Ruska Prize, the MSA Burton Medal, and the MAS Duncumb Award.