2026 Major Society Awardee - Distinguished Scientist Award, Physical Sciences

Frances M. Ross is the TDK Professor at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA, USA. She received her B.A. in Physics and Ph.D. in Materials Science from Cambridge University, UK, and along the way became an enthusiast of electron microscopy. She extended her interests to include in situ microscopy during her postdoc at A.T.&T. Bell Laboratories, then as a Staff Scientist at the National Center for Electron Microscopy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and finally as a Research Staff Member at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, before joining MIT. Her research is based around the development and application of in situ electron microscopy techniques to help understand crystal growth, epitaxy, self-assembly and electrochemical and other liquid phase processes.

2026 Major Society Awardee - Distinguished Scientist Award, Biological Sciences

Scott Fraser applies the tools of chemistry, engineering, and physics to fields ranging from developmental biology to medicine. His personal research centers on imaging and molecular analyses of intact biological systems, with an emphasis on early development, organogenesis, and medical diagnostics. His innovations that have spawned several start-ups, and have been integrated into instruments and FDA approved diagnostics. After building interdisciplinary centers at UCIrvine, Caltech & USC, he is now directing the San Francisco site of the Chan-Zuckeberg Initiative’s Biohub.  Fraser’s activity in interdisciplinary research and in translational science have been recognized by his election as a Fellow of the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Inventors, the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers, the American Academy of Arts and Science, and the European Academy of Science.

2026 Major Society Awardee - Hildegard H. Crowley Award for Outstanding Technologist in the Biological Sciences

Tracey Stewart is a senior microscopy professional and Manager of the Roy J. Carver High Resolution Microscopy Facility at Iowa State University, where she has championed interdisciplinary research and mentored hundreds of scientists for nearly thirty years. A certified Biological Electron Microscopy Technologist, she specializes in designing innovative imaging strategies across life and material sciences. Her career is defined by a commitment to advancing scientific discovery through expert facility management and technical excellence, complemented by her active service on multiple Microscopy Society of America committees.

2026 Major Society Awardee - Chuck Fiori Award for Outstanding Technologist in the Physical Sciences

John H. Turner joined the staff at the National Center for Electron Microscopy in 1984, shortly after graduating from UC Berkeley and shortly after the founding of NCEM. He has positively impacted multiple generations of NCEM staff and users via training in photographic processing, digital image processing, focused ion beam sample preparation and overall management of facilities and maintenance for NCEM.

2026 Major Society Awardee - Burton Medal, Physical Sciences

Pinshane Y. Huang is a Professor and Racheff Faculty Scholar in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Associate Director of the Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has pioneered electron microscopy methods to probe 2D materials and heterostructures, including measuring their defects and strain, atomic rearrangements, moiré structures, and interfacial properties. Recent accomplishments include developing electron ptychography methods to image thermal vibrations atom-by-atom and enabling sub-angstrom resolution in electron microscopes without an aberration-corrector.

2026 Major Society Awardee - Morton D. Maser Distinguished Service Award

Dr. Potts is currently a Professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine. He has served as a session organizer, a program chair, a biological director and recently served as President of MSA. Dr. Potts is presently the Editor-in-Chief of Microcopy Today.

2026 Major Society Awardee - George Palade Award

Dr. Bin Li is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Oxford, where his research focuses on the application of artificial intelligence for bioimaging, pathology, and precision medicine. He currently works on AI-driven computational pathology projects aimed at advancing personalized medicine and predicting drug responses in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), supported by the NIHR and CRUK. Dr. Li earned his PhD and M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, specializing in computational microscopy and bio-image analysis, for which he received the 2024 HIMA Best Dissertation Award from the Association for Pathology Informatics.

2026 Major Society Awardee - Albert Crewe Award

Menglin Zhu is an electron microscopist motivated by atomic-scale secrets. He earned his PhD with Jinwoo Hwang at The Ohio State University and is currently a postdoctoral researcher with James LeBeau at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research looks beyond the limits of conventional microscopy to better understand the structure of materials and how they respond under different conditions.

For advancing electron and ion microscopy—especially focused ion beam methods and correlative workflows—while leading the Canadian Centre for Electron Microscopy and fostering community training and service within MSA’s microscopy enterprise.

For sustained and outstanding contributions to accelerate our understanding of the structure and stability of electrocatalysts for hydrogen technologies through the use of innovative analytical electron microscopy methods.

For his contributions to advancements in atomic resolution electron tomography, automation, and data processing for materials sciences, and his service to the Microscopy Society of America.

For pioneering and field-defining contributions to electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS), including the first demonstrations of atomic-resolution vibrational spectroscopy, single-atom phonon detection in the electron microscope.