Rate My Professor David Muller

David A. Muller is the Samuel B. Eckert Professor of Engineering in the School of Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University. He joined the Cornell faculty in 2003 and serves as co-director of the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science and co-director of the Cornell Center for Materials Research. Muller received a B.S. in physics from the University of Sydney in 1991, an M.S. in physics from the University of Sydney in 1993, and a Ph.D. in physics from Cornell University in 1996. Prior to returning to Cornell, he was a member of the technical staff at Bell Laboratories from 1997 to 2003.

Muller’s research focuses on the development of quantitative electron microscopy methods for atomic-resolution materials analysis and its application to understanding electronic-structure changes on the atomic scale and their connection to macroscopic material behavior. His work encompasses systems including turbine blades, batteries, fuel cells, transistors, and two-dimensional superconductors, with emphasis on renewable energy materials and the creation of electronic phases not found in bulk materials. He has also contributed to hardware and algorithms for high-bandwidth pixelated electron microscope detectors. Muller is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Microscopy Society of America. His awards include the Joseph F. Keithley Award for Advances in Measurement Science from the American Physical Society in 2024, the John Cowley Medal from the International Federation of Societies for Microscopy in 2023, the Ernst Ruska Prize from the German Society for Electron Microscopy in 2021, and the Burton Medal from the Microscopy Society of America in 2006. Key publications include “Electron Ptychography Achieves Atomic-Resolution Limits Set by Lattice Vibrations” in Science (2021), “Electron Ptychography of 2D Materials to Deep Sub-Ångström Resolution” in Nature (2018), and “Atomic-Scale Chemical Imaging of Composition and Bonding by Aberration-Corrected Microscopy” in Science (2008).