Rate My Professor Paul Midgley

Paul Midgley, FRS, HonFRMS, MAE, is Professor of Materials Science in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge, where he has been a faculty member since 1997. He obtained his BSc and MSc degrees from the University of Bristol, followed by a PhD in 1991 from the same institution for his work on electron microscopy studies of high-temperature superconductors at the H.H. Wills Physics Laboratory. After his doctorate, Midgley held two prestigious research fellowships at Bristol: one funded by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 and the other by the Royal Society. Upon joining Cambridge, he served as Assistant Director of Research, advancing to University Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader, and finally Professor of Materials Science in 2008. From 1997 to 2018, he directed the department's Electron Microscope Facility, and from October 2018 to September 2020, he was Head of the Department. Additionally, he is a Professorial Fellow at Peterhouse, Cambridge.

Midgley's research centers on the development and application of advanced transmission electron microscopy techniques, including electron tomography, precession electron diffraction (PED and SPED), and monochromated STEM-EELS for nano-plasmonics, enabling high-resolution 2D and 3D characterization of materials' structure, composition, and properties. His work spans nanoscale structures in semiconductors, catalysts, nanoparticles, MOFs, pharmaceuticals, and more, with innovations like compressed sensing algorithms and machine learning for multi-dimensional data analysis. Notable publications include "Electron tomography and holography in materials science" (Nature Materials, 2009), "3D Morphology of Iron Oxide Nanoparticles with Reactive Concave Surfaces – a Compressed Sensing-Electron Tomography (CS-ET) Approach" (Nano Letters, 2011), "Three-Dimensional Imaging of Localized Surface Plasmon Resonances of Metal Nanoparticles" (Nature, 2013), and "Measurement of molecular motion in organic semiconductors by thermal diffuse electron scattering" (Nature Materials, 2013). He has received the Rosenhain Medal and Prize (2004), Ernst-Ruska Prize (2007), election as Fellow of the Royal Society (2014), and Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Microscopical Society (2016). Midgley served as President of the European Microscopy Society (2008-2012) and Past-President (2012-2016), and was Editor-in-Chief of Ultramicroscopy for many years.