Ondrej Krivanek is at the forefront of pioneering advances that have endowed electron microscopy with the ability to image and analyse matter atom-by-atom. His early work improved an existing electron microscope and used it to image directly, for the first time, the atomic structure of defects in semiconductors. He next designed several instruments for electron energy loss spectrometry (EELS). These are now used by hundreds of researchers worldwide. He also co-authored an EELS atlas, which is a standard reference source for spectra. Recently, he designed and built a practical aberration corrector, thereby reaching a goal that had remained elusive for some fifty years. His novel microscopes are now able to map chemical elements in solid samples with atomic resolution and single atom sensitivity.
Ondrej is a co-founder of Nion. Ondrej has worked as the director of Research at Gatan Inc., as professor at Arizona State University and as researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. He has been developing electron-optical instruments since his post-doctorate: serial-detection EELS in the early 1980's, parallel-detection EELS in the mid-1980's, CCD cameras and image analysis software for electron microscopy in the late 1980’s, and imaging filters in the early 1990's. Since 1995, he has focused on aberration correction, whole microscope design and managing Nion. In 2020, he was jointly awarded the Kavli Prize in nanoscience. He has a Ph.D. in Physics from Cambridge University in the UK.