Thomas La Grange

Biography

Thomas LaGrange (EPFL, Lausanne) is a materials physicist with an extensive background in electron microscopy techniques, TEM instrumentation development, and laser technology. He received a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, a master's degree in materials science from Michigan State University, and a Ph.D. in applied physics at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). He joined Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) as a postdoc in 2005 and later as a staff scientist. At LLNL, he developed the Dynamic Transmission Electron Microscope (DTEM) and the Movie Mode DTEM instrumentation, for which he received two R&D100 Awards, Nano50 awards, Microscopy Today Innovation Awards, and several patents on this technology, amongst other awards. He left LLNL and joined Integrated Dynamic Electron Solutions, Inc in 2014 as the Chief Technology Officer. During his time at IDES, he constructed and installed several UTEMs worldwide. Since 2015, he has been a senior scientist and faculty lecturer at EPFL, recently joining the LUMES, the group of Fabrizio Carbone, in 2019. His main scientific interests are the study of non-equilibrium phase transition kinetics, the role of defects' in rapid materials dynamics, and their influence on material's macroscopic behavior in applications. His recent research pursuits extend to developing new ultrafast microscopy approaches to study material dynamics, including time-resolved q-EELS, phase plate imaging, PINEM, and cryo-LTEM techniques.