Nestor J. Zaluzec (Photon Sciences Directorate) has been named the recipient of the 2020 Peter Duncumb Award for Excellence in Microanalysis by the by the Microanalysis Society (MAS) for his long-term and sustained body of work and accomplishments in advanced x-ray and electron spectroscopy of materials, including instrumentation development, methodology, software, and educational outreach to the worldwide community. This award is presented annually in order to recognize outstanding achievement in the field of microanalysis through technical accomplishment, leadership, and educational and professional activities. It is awarded to an individual currently active in his or her career through nomination by the MAS membership and selection by the MAS Council. The award will be presented at the plenary session of the annual 2020 Microscopy and Microanalysis meeting in Milwaukee, WI, on August 3, 2020.
Nestor is a senior scientist and principle investigator in the Photon Sciences Directorate of Argonne National Laboratory as well as a Fellow of : Oak Ridge National Laboratory , the University of Chicago/CASE and Northwestern University/NAISE collaboratories. His research interests include the development of state-of-the-art instrumentation, software, and techniques for x-ray and electron spectroscopy, analytical, and scanning confocal electron microscopy.
In addition to creating tools for science, Nestor uses these leading-edge technologies to study issues in technologically important materials. His work over the last 40 years at Argonne has included studies in the areas of structural phase transformation in metals, radiation damage in alloys, ceramic oxides for geologic immobilization of nuclear waste materials, elemental segregation in a wide range of materials ranging from metals and catalysts to semiconductors and superconductors, magnetic dichroism, studies of optical photovoltaics and plasmonics in coupled and hybrid nanostructures, and more recently photo-catalysts, bio-materials and the interaction of particles in nanofluidic systems. He continues to investigate how aberration-corrected instruments can be re-engineered to improve the sensitivity of spectroscopy in analytical, multi-modal, multi-dimensional , in-situ studies of hard and soft materials. He was one of the earliest to realize the potential impact of the internet on science and established the first TelePresence Microscopy Collaboratory in the 1990’s, which has served as a model for outreach to both the scientific and education communities, providing unencumbered access to scientific resources.
Nestor has received numerous awards for his research and educational outreach including: Fellow and Distinguished Scientist of the Microscopy Society of America, Fellow of the Microanalysis Society, Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois, the Professional Achievement Alumni Award from Illinois Institute of Technology, the August Kohler Award from the State Microscopical Society of Illinois, Distinguished Service and Lifetime Member Awards Australian Microscopy and Microanalysis Society, the Maser Distinguished Service Award from Microscopy Society of America, and the E.F. Burton Award for Contributions to Microscopy by a Young Scientist. Nestor also founded and was the first Director of the ANL Electron Microscopy Center, where he developed the first parallel EELS system to employ charge-coupled device-array detectors, plasma cleaning technology for electron microscopy, and has received two R&D 100 Awards one for the invention of the Scanning Confocal Electron Microscope and the second for the π sR X-ray Detector. He continues to engage the next generation of scientists through his adjunct work over the years with local universities (NIU , UofC, UIUC, UIC, NU, IIT) as well as with middle and high school students through the Illinois Junior Academy of Science.