Distinguished Research Staff Member
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Dr. Larry Allard obtained all three of his degrees at the University of Michigan in (what is now the) Materials Science and Engineering Dept. He started his electron microscopy career in 1963 as a sophomore, learning theory and practice under Prof. Wilbur Bigelow. He is currently a Distinguished Research Staff Member in the Materials Science & Technology Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. His research involves ultra-high-resolution imaging and microanalysis in studies of precipitation processes in aluminum alloys and superalloys, catalytic materials (e.g. single-atom catalysts) for automotive exhaust after-treatment and other chemical processes, and instrumental developments involving in situ heating and operando gas-reactions electron microscopy used in those studies. He is the chief scientist in charge of the Aberration-Corrected Electron Microscope (ACEM) project at the High Temperature Materials Lab at ORNL; his JEOL 2200FS instrument is one of the first of the new generation of STEM/TEM instruments with sub-Ångström resolution to be installed in the US (2004). He is also the principal technical designer of ORNL’s Advanced Microscopy Laboratory (AML), a facility currently housing 6 aberration-corrected microscopes. Dr. Allard has more than 350 cited scientific publications; he has been a co-organizer of more than a dozen workshops and symposia on advanced microscopy topics, and has co-edited several conference proceedings and books, including “Introduction to Electron Holography,” the first definitive textbook on electron holography, published by Kluwer/Plenum in 1999. Dr. Allard was elected Fellow of the Microscopy Society of America in 2010, and Fellow of the Microbeam Analysis Society in 2022. He is still collaborating closely with Prof. Bigelow, who at age 100 continues to actively engage with the scientific pursuits of his colleagues in microscopy at ORNL and other institutions.