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David A Muller

@davidamuller.bsky.social
446 followers 516 following 142 posts

"Learning more and more about less and less" Materials Physics and Electron Microscopy at Cornell (he/him) muller.research.engineering.cornell…

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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
And in the sequel it's CO2
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
Seeing Li ions at atomic resolution is hard, seeing the missing ones? Harder. Dasol's electron ptychography now images Li vacancies in a battery cathode in 3D—atom column by atom column: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/... @pubs.acs.org 🧪⚛️
pubs.acs.org
Atomic-Scale Imaging of Lithium Vacancies in a Battery Cathode by Multislice Electron Ptychography
Atomic-resolution imaging of battery materials is critical for identification of local defects and structural variations, which are tied to battery performance. However, since battery materials are, b...
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
Cornell's cows are absolutely out standing in their fields right now (all 2,000+ acres). Maybe the NYT just forgot we are an ivy again?
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Cornell Center for Materials Research (CCMR) @cornellccmr.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Atomic‑scale nickel. Zero precious metals. Serious fuel‑cell power—thanks in part to CCMR tools news.cornell.edu/stories/2026...
news.cornell.edu
Nickel catalyst enables high-performance fuel cell free of precious metals | Cornell Chronicle
Cornell researchers have developed a non-precious-metal catalyst that represents a major step toward alkaline fuel cells that use inexpensive commodity metals, such as nickel and cobalt, in several en...
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
@sciencex.bsky.social ex.bsky.social picked up our #ptychography paper on imaging the atomic-scale roughness in transistor channels in 3D, in a single scan and without having to tilt the sample. ⚛️
ex.bsky.social
Bluesky
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Katharine Hayhoe @katharinehayhoe.com · 13/02/2026
Bluesky is the new science Twitter, new study by @whysharksmatter.bsky.social and Julia Wester concludes! "Results show that for every reported professional benefit that scientists once gained from Twitter, scientists can now gain that benefit more effectively on Bluesky than on Twitter."
academic.oup.com
Scientists no Longer Find Twitter Professionally Useful, and have Switched to Bluesky
Synopsis. Social media has become widely used by the scientific community for a variety of professional uses, including networking and public outreach. For
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
The offical citation is "For developing a new generation of electron detectors and reconstruction algorithms leading to the highest resolution electron microscope." www.nae.edu/345149/NAENe... or as a friend joked "the academy award goes to David for the best picture" 🧪 ⚛️ #NAE
nae.edu
National Academy of Engineering Elects 130 Members and 28 International Members
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) today announced the election of 130 members and 28 international members to its Class of 2026, said NAE President ...
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
Given the weather today, it’s time to repost my favorite phase diagram: Nakaya’s snow crystal morphology. We are towards the bottom right today. 🧪 ⚛️ #cryoEM
Phase diagram for shapes of snowflakes as a function of temperature and water vapor content, showing when to expect fluffy snowflakes and dense crumbly bits of ice
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 30/12/2025
And this is when Bluesky became the old twitter
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
While Cornell has field theorists, we also have practitioners
Three horse are out standing in their field at the Cornell horse farm, with strong fall colors on the trees behind them
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
Imaging hydrogen atoms with ptychography
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
Jim West's group taught us everything we know about building ultra-quiet rooms
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
Ducktober
Two wood ducks paddling together in Cayuga lake as the trees on the opposite shore are just starting to turn
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
#cryoEM 🧪⚛️ Lena’s paper on imaging thick biological sections with STEM is finally published! We started this work almost 10 years ago. After Lena passed in 2023, I spent much of my sabbatical working with Yue and Steve to wrap this up. Also learned a lot about TEM vs STEM dose efficiency
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
Some good news 🧪⚛️
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
Our new zippy ptychography code, PtyRAD is now out in print. 3D Multislice reconstructions that used to take a day, now can be done in about an hour! 🧪⚛️ #ptycho paper and install links: academic.oup.com/mam/article/...
academic.oup.com
PtyRAD: A High-Performance and Flexible Ptychographic Reconstruction Framework with Automatic Differentiation
Abstract. Electron ptychography has recently achieved unprecedented resolution, offering valuable insights across diverse material systems, including in th
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
Our hands-on workshop on Electron #Ptychography ! ⚛️🧪 using our new fast python code starts tomorrow, Tuesday, July 8. Lecture Schedule is below, for folks who want to listen in on-line. We hope to post the tutorial and code walk through videos later. cornell.zoom.us/j/9512638476...
Schedule of lectures for the ptychography workshop, from 8-11 July
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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
This is fantastic, do read it.
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
Took a break and conducted some pier review last week. 12/10
Seneca lake pier at Watkins glenCanandaiga lake pier at sunset.  It has lots of little boat sheds
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Jessica Pellien @jessicapellien.bsky.social · 14/12/2022
One of my favorite things is seeing how publishers around the world reinterpret covers for foreign language editions of our books. The Alchemy of Us is being published in Korean. A side by side comparison -- same great content, totally different vibe.
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
Celebrating Hari’s thesis defense with a NaNbO3-themed cake. It is layered in 3D to match his paper rdcu.be/eiV0u
Hari starts (multi)slicing the cake decorated with M&Ms laid out in a perovskite lattice
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Kristian G. Andersen @kgandersen.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
The end of US leadership in science, technology, and innovation. All in one little table. A tremendous gift to China, courtesy of the GOP. nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/00-NSF...
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
Danielle was one of Lena’s students 🧪
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
So the crazy thing here is the company this is supposed to be about is Corning. The company famous for its glass research. And the across the board metric is a measure of how similar individual atom positions are in their CRYSTAL structures. So much is nuts here, but that should have been a red flag
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Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
“From chocolate chips to computer chips” 🧪⚛️
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
Betteridge's law: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
We're holding a hands-on workshop on Electron #Ptychography ! ⚛️🧪 using our new fast python code When: July 8-11, Cornell University, Ithaca NY Organizers: David Muller, Jim LeBeau, Steve Zeltmann Applications on a rolling basis until full www.ccmr.cornell.edu/facilities/p...
Flyer for ptychography workshop, with pretty pictures of improved resolution
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 13/04/2025
USC vs MIT
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 12/04/2025
This has been going for a while. When I worked at Lumon, erm Lucent Technologies in the late 90’s this similarity was also noted, but that is was also inflamed. Still an improvement on the previous deathstar logo
The old Lucent Technologies logo was a red circle painted in a zen style
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 12/04/2025
Our center helping out local businesses including biotech startups 🧪⚛️
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
Well, tomorrow is going to be fun 🧪⚛️
NYT article on $1B funding  at Cornell block by the Trump administration
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
Field theory - Cornell style Look carefully for the spherical horse in the background. Foals due soon
A horse has put its nose over the fence in hope of a snack.
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 20/03/2025
After reading this statement, it is worth remembering that the I in DEI is Inclusion. The opposite of Inclusion is separateness. The Afrikaans word for separateness is Apartheid
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
Shared in the Nowruz celebrations with Iranian grad students and postdocs in Willard Straight last night. It will not be an easy year and they know it, but spring always comes
The haftseen table with the seven items to celebrate spring
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Beth Popp Berman @epopppp.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
It is really hard to watch people willfully tear down an infrastructure that allowed us to double lifespans, drastically reduce poverty, and become one of the richest countries in the world.
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
"This is fine.gif" Let's just say I had an interesting time trying to find a cognizant program officer on Tuesday - every time someone inside NSF referred me to someone else, within 10 minutes, the new email bounced as that person was removed from the system www.politico.com/news/2025/02...
politico.com
‘You screwed people’: Inside the National Science Foundation’s firing of 168 workers
At an emotional meeting, foundation officials announced layoffs for about 10 percent of their workforce and warned of more firings to come.
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 13/02/2025
Thinking about this a lot lately
Given that Hitler had repeatedly vowed to use the democratic process in order to destroy democracy, why did the people committed to democracy let him do it?
Many historians have jousted with this question, but perhaps the most piercing account remains an early one, written less than a decade after the war by the émigré German scholar Lewis Edinger, who had known the leaders of the Social Democrats well and consulted them directly— the ones who had survived, that is— for his study. His conclusion was that they simply "trusted that constitutional processes and the return of reason and fair play would assure the survival of the Weimar Republic and its chief supporters." The Social Democratic leadership had become a gerontocracy, out of touch with the generational changes beneath them. The top Social Democratic leaders were, on average, two decades older than their Nazi counterparts.
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
Welcome to the better place, noted duckchographer @shellystem.bsky.social
Conference security catches a duck smuggler at bag check.  The rather large rubber duck is rainbow tie died, and labeled “duck”
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
The “Make Apartheid Great Again” dude is at it again
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
My favorite phase diagram for this time of year is the Nakaya diagram. No fluffy snow flakes today! #chemsky 🧪 ⚛️
Nakaya phase diagram for the shape of snow flakes as a function of temperature and moisture in the air.  Big fluffy flakes from dendritic growth occur at high temperatures and saturations. Below -20C onlu plates and columns form - leady to crunchy snow
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 18/01/2025
2 papers back to back in this issue from alums of Fraser Stoddart's group. Also a chainmail-like polymer from Will Dichtel that we imaged #chemsky 🧪 news.northwestern.edu/stories/2025...
news.northwestern.edu
Chainmail-like material could be the future of armor
First 2D mechanically interlocked polymer exhibits exceptional flexibility and strength
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Leah Stokes @leahstokes.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
Cannot stop thinking about how Octavia Butler wrote a book in 1993 about climate change. It opens with deadly fires in LA in 2025. In the story, a fascist President has just won office with the campaign slogan "Make America Great Again." She was a modern day Nostradamus. If only we'd listened.
The cover of the book Parable of the Sower.
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Vivian O’Blivion🏴‍☠️ @obliviating.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
Hey, it’s one of those Mexican firefighters who came over here to take our jobs. And save our kittens.
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 04/01/2025
So “democracy dies in darkness” was a promise?
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 01/01/2025
Happy New Year’s Eve (whispered quietly for my hung-over Aussie friends)
Sunset on the beach at Aptos
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
Welcome to clearer skies
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
It may be winter in the old place, but welcome to less cloudy skies @pierrexthibault.bsky.social
Beebe lake behind the Cornell physics department. The leaves are down, but the sky is blue
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
In 2006 I plotted the number of Nature journals vs time and it sure looked like a Moore’s law: “the number of nature journals doubles every five years”. It’s slowed down to every 7.5 years, but we are still on track to get every scientist their own personal journal 🧪 #scipub
Log log plot showing a good fit to number of journals in the nature portfolio  vs time
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David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
Snow day
Our neigh-bor at the Cornell horse farm snuffling in the snow
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