Celebrating 15 Years of Aberration-Corrected TEM RESEARCH in Africa

In November 2025, the JEOL JEM-ARM200F double aberration-corrected TEM housed at the DSTI-NRF Centre for HRTEM will mark a major milestone – 15 years since the first electrons travelled down its column.

To commemorate this achievement, the CHRTEM is launching a series of events, starting Nov 2025, highlighting the transformative impact of advanced transmission electron microscopy (TEM) on South Africa’s national system of innovation. The first of these events will be a research focussed Insights in Microscopy workshop series that aims to highlight the various techniques and applications of TEM.

You are invited to attend the,

27 November 2025 – Special Symposium on the Frontiers of Transmission Electron Microscopy

Venue: DSTI-NRF Centre for HRTEM (invitation only) and online

The Insights in Microscopy workshop series will conclude with a one-day symposium featuring keynote presentations and a panel discussion with leading national and international experts in transmission electron microscopy. The symposium will explore current and future developments in TEM applications, with a particular focus on their relevance to South Africa and the African research landscape.

A highlight of the symposium will be a panel discussion on the future applicability of aberration-corrected TEM in South Africa, aiming to bring together voices from academia, industry, and government.

Programme:

SPECIAL SYMPOSIUM ON THE FRONTIERS OF TRANSMISSION ELECTRON MICROSCOPY
08.45 - 09.00	WELCOME AND OPENING REMARKS Prof Jaco Olivier
SESSION 1
09.00 – 09.45	Prof Peter van Aken	Uncovering Novel Interfacial Phenomena in Functional Oxides: From Symmetry-Forbidden Interfaces to Tuneable Magnetic Anisotropy
09.45 – 10.30	Prof Yi Wang	Optimizing data acquisition and interpretation in multi-dimensional STEM
10.30 – 11.00	Break
SESSION 2
11.00 – 11.45	Dr Lewys Jones	Low-dose, Fast, Multi-frame and Digital STEM Acquisition
11.45 – 12.30	Dr Damian McGrouther	Achieving new levels of insight with JEOL’s latest developments in TEM & STEM
12.30 – 13.30	Lunch Break
PANEL DISCUSSION
13.30 – 14.30	Panelists: Prof Peter van Aken Prof Yi Wang Prof Lewys Jones Dr Damian McGrouther Moderator: Prof Jaco Olivier	Topic: Evaluating the Role of Transmission Electron Microscopy in the South African National System of Innovation

Online Registration - Special Symposium on the Frontiers of Transmission Electron Microscopy

To gain online access to the symposium, all participants are required to register through our virtual access portal. After submitting your details, you will receive a confirmation email followed by secure access links for each selected session. Please ensure that you register using a valid email address.

Prof. Dr. Peter A. van Aken

Prof. Dr. Peter A. van Aken is the Director of the Stuttgart Center for Electron Microscopy (StEM) at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, advancing high-resolution electron microscopy, Adjunct Professor at the Technical University of Darmstadt in the Department of Materials- and Geosciences, and Honorary Professor at the Centre for High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy in the Department of Physics, Nelson Mandela University.

Under his leadership, StEM excels in scanning and transmission electron microscopy (TEM), focused ion beam techniques, and method development. His research focuses on atomic-scale characterization of material interfaces, complex oxide heterostructures, strained semiconductors, nanostructured thin films, plasmonic nanostructures, nanoparticles, and functional molecules on 2D materials, enhancing the understanding of structure-property relationships.

Prof. van Aken served as Vice President (2020–2021) and President (2022–2023) of the German Society for Electron Microscopy (DGE). Recognized globally, he was listed among Clarivate Analytics' "Highly Cited Researchers" (2018–2020).

As Coordinator and Principal Investigator of the European ESTEEM3 project (2019–2023), he strengthened Europe’s electron microscopy infrastructure, integrating state-of-the-art facilities and providing transnational access to advanced atomic-scale characterization techniques. ESTEEM3 fostered interdisciplinary collaborations between academia and industry, driving innovation in materials analysis across physical, chemical, and biological sciences.

Prof. van Aken continues to push the frontiers of electron microscopy, delivering transformative insights into functional materials and advancing nanoscience and materials engineering.

Prof Yi Wang

Yi Wang is a professor and the inaugural director of the Center for Microscopy and Analysis at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He is a faculty member at the State key Laboratory of Mechanics and Control for Aerospace Structures. His research focuses on developing methodologies in scanning transmission electron microscopy, electron energy loss spectroscopy, and 4D-STEM, along with their applications in functional materials.

He received his PhD in Physics (2012) from the University of Caen Normandy and the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France. Following a year postdoctoral research at CNRS, he joined the Stuttgart center for Electron Microscopy as a scientist, where he worked until 2021. He has received many awards, including the National Natural Science fund for Excellent Young Scientists (Overseas) of China, the Jiangsu Province Distinguished Professorship, and the GCCCD Outstanding Young Engineer (OYE) Award. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers, including e.g., Nature Materials, Nature Communications, Advanced Materials, and Ultramicroscopy.

Dr Lewys Jones

Dr Lewys Jones is the Ussher Associate Professor of Ultramicroscopy and a Research Ireland / Royal Society University Research Fellow in the School of Physics, Trinity College Dublin. He leads the Ultramicroscopy research group at the Advanced Microscopy Laboratory, focusing on instrumentation and technique development for transmission electron microscopy.

He received his PhD from the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford in 2013, which focused on scanning stability in the aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope (AC-STEM) and on applications of focal-series annular dark-field data.
He has over 3800 citations across his publications and been awarded three patents. He has developed two commercial software plug-ins for Digital Micrograph in collaboration with HREM Research and is now the co-founder and CEO of turboTEM Limited, a Trinity spin-out company commercialising innovative, modular, and retrofittable TEM hardware upgrades.

He is currently a Board Member at the European Microscopy Society and Director of the RI-EPSRC CDT in the Advanced Characterisation of Materials. Dr. Jones is a Member of the Institute of Physics and has been a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society since 2015; he was the President of the Microscopy Society of Ireland from 2021-2025.