MicroscopyPioneers
The Adventures and Achievements of Ondrej Krivanek by Laura Wilson and Dara Laczniak, MSA Student Council
Editor’s Note: Tis month, Microscopy Today, in collaboration with the Microscopy Society of America Student Council, continues their series of interviews with Microscopy & Microanalysis 2021 plenary speakers and sits down with Dr. Ondrej Krivanek, winner of the 2020 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience, to discuss his incredible work and the paths that led him to findings that have impacted electron microscopy research around the world.
Cameron Varano, Pioneers Editor Te Pennsylvania State University, 201 Old Main, University Park, PA 16802
cavarano@psu.edu Anyone working with transmission electron micro-
scopes knows that aberration correction is essential for acquiring clear images; this wouldn’t be possible without the work of Dr. Ondrej Krivanek. He has been working in the microscopy field for decades (Figure 1). He pio- neered aberration correction, is a leading expert in elec- tron energy loss spectroscopy, and is a highly acclaimed electron microscopist (Figure 2). In 2020, he was awarded the Kavli Prize for Nanoscience—a recognition akin to the Nobel Prize, which honors outstanding scientific achieve- ment. Dr. Krivanek was one of the plenary speakers for this year’s Microscopy and Microanalysis (M&M 2021) Confer- ence, and we were lucky enough to get the chance to speak with him. In the following interview, we discuss the tri- als and triumphs of Dr. Krivanek’s career path in electron microscopy. In addition to having some amazing stories, he also had some valuable advice for early-career profes- sionals in the field.
You have quite the accomplished research and instrument design repertoire. How did you handle research failures? Some ideas may seem a little reckless at first, but if your
hunch is based on knowledge that suggests your approach to the problem is going to work, it’s worth pursuing. I have a hard time thinking of outright failures where I went into a project and had to give it up with absolutely nothing to show for it. Tere’s been plenty of learning experiences, though. When you go into a new field, you don’t know everything that’s important. So, when you build the first version of an instrument, typically what happens is that you realize, “Oh, this is something I should have paid more attention to, and that other thing did not really work out well either.” Typically,
it’s the second instrument 56 that’s doi:10.1017/S1551929521001115
a really good one. But I don’t think you would call that a failure. You would just call it a learning experience. Tere’s no way you can actually figure out everything before you start on the project because the literature about the subject has not been written yet—it’s brand new. Tat’s basically progress in science, right? At every stage you say, “Tis was good, but these things need improving,” and you move on to the next stage. Don’t rely on popular knowledge. Just because a crowd
of scientists has managed to persuade itself that things are a certain way, don’t get discouraged. Tere are two things to consider. One is, is it going to work? Tis is something you have to decide for yourself. Supposedly there was a famous NSF report that aberration correction was not going to work back in the 1980s. I never read it, but if I had, I would have disagreed. Te other one is funding, and that can be a bigger problem. If you want to do something really new and/or something that, in the past, has not worked, agencies may be discouraged from funding you. Tis is where you have to get inventive. Every project, even if it’s really worthwhile, will meet some skepticism in the beginning; if there weren’t skepticism, it probably would have been done already. For any really adventurous thing, there will hopefully be some moment of brilliance where you say, “Tis is the strategy I have to employ to get funded because the conventional routes are not going to work.” Good scientists recognize that there are high-risk projects that might not work out but are really worthwhile and should be tried. If you persist long enough, you should be able to have a referee who is in that category, and you should get funded. What’s important is to do really good, fun science
and explore new frontiers. Everybody at the start of their careers needs to ask themselves, “Which field is likely to be an interesting one to go into?” You want to know about the
www.microscopy-today.com • 2021 September
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