2012

Science & Technology at the Ames Laboratory

Issue 2 Issue 2

of The Ames Laboratory
Contents

4Awards

11Emily Smith

Faces of

 The Ames Laboratory 

10PAGE

Midwest Forensics Resource 

Center lends scientific expertise 

to law enforcement

Material Witness

16 Karl Gschneidner

6

14 Ryan Ott

13 Javier Vela

17 Ning Fang

12 Aaron Bryden 18 Tanya Prozorov

19 John Corbett

15Rob McQueeney

Copyright 2012 by the Ames Laboratory. All rights 

reserved. For additional information about the Ames 

Laboratory or topics covered in this publication, 

please contact: 

ENERGY

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF Office of

Science

Inquiry is published biannually by the Ames 

Laboratory Office of Public Affairs. Iowa 

State University operates the Laboratory 

for the U.S. Department of Energy under 

contract DE AC02 07CH11358. 

Editor, Inquiry

Ames Laboratory

111 TASF

Ames, Iowa 50011-3020

515-294-9557

www.ameslab.gov

The Ames Laboratory is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory seeking solutions to energy-related 

problems through the exploration of chemical, engineering, materials and mathematical sciences, and physics. 

Established in the 1940s with the successful development of the most efficient process to produce high-purity 

uranium metal for atomic energy, Ames Lab now pursues much broader priorities than the materials research that 

has given the Lab international credibility. Responding to issues of national concern, Ames Laboratory scientists 

are actively involved in innovative research, science education programs, the development of applied technologies 

and the quick transfer of such technologies to industry. Uniquely integrated within a university environment, the 

Lab stimulates creative thought and encourages scientific discovery, providing solutions to complex problems and 

educating and training tomorrow’s scientific talent.

Steve Karsjen: Public Affairs Director

Kerry Gibson: Editor

Breehan Gerleman Lucchesi: Contributing Editor

Laura Millsaps: Contributing Editor

Grant Luhmann: Art Director

The front cover, back cover and page 10 artwork was created using AnreaMosaic software. www.andreaplanet.com/andreamosaic
Inquiry Issue 2 | 2012 3

From the Director

Faces of The Ames Laboratory

f you follow the popular media, scientists appear 

to be a quirky bunch of people. I’m not too concerned about 

that image, though, for a couple of reasons. First, I work 

around a group of truly outstanding scientists, so I know the 

truth. Second, I have observed over the course of many decades 

that the media – and TV in particular – present new groups first 

as caricatures and slowly develop mainstream roles for them over 

several seasons of programming and casting. Scientific characters 

are on that path, but we still have a little way to go.

This issue of Inquiry is devoted to introducing some of the 

Ames Laboratory’s people to our readers. Our people are the core 

of our success, and the Ames Lab’s team includes some really 

interesting ones. Like all other scientists, they are regular people 

of all kinds, with regular lives and regular sorts of interests, but 

they do share a handful of distinguishing features. First and 

foremost, they are all high achievers. Second, they all pursue 

their work – and the rest of their lives – with great intensity. 

Third, they see connections between their work and the rest of 

their lives that may or may not be obvious to the casual observer.

Here is an image of me, somewhat outside of the context of 

my work, with a few of my favorite things. You may well ask 

what connects a collection of guitars to directing a DOE national 

lab. Well, the Ames Laboratory does the fundamental science in 

chemistry and physics, and the applied science that allow new 

materials to be invented and engineered for use in products that we all 

use. The guitars in my collection all contain non-traditional materials 

such as polymers, metals, composites, and even ceramics (in some of the 

magnetic pick-ups). As a materials scientist, I am fascinated with the 

ways in which materials affect the performance of the products in which 

they are used, and these guitars provide endless examples of materials 

chosen for various reasons, both good and bad, with varying degrees of 

success.

Read on to see how some of the Ames Laboratory’s scientists relate 

their work to the rest of their lives.

In this issue, we’ve also highlighted some of the work being done by the 

Midwest Forensics Resource Center. The MFRC serves regional partners, 

particularly state crime laboratories, in some 16 states. Ames Laboratory 

researchers are working to bring basic research techniques and knowledge 

to bear in identifying new ways to make connections between evidence 

and criminal activities.

I

Alex King, Director

 ... these guitars 

provide endless examples of materials chosen 

for various reasons, both good and bad, with varying 

degrees of success.
Awards

Iowa Powder Atomization Technologies (IPAT) won $25,000 in the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial 

Center’s business plan competition. From left: IPAT cofounder Andrew Heidloff, IPAT business developer 

Doug Moore, John Pappajohn and IPAT cofounder Joel Rieken.

Iowa Powder Atomization Technologies, a startup company based on technology developed at the 

Ames Laboratory, won the 2012 John Pappajohn 

Iowa Business Plan Competition. The competition 

honors top business plans of companies in business 

for four years or less, with an aim of stimulating 

business development. The prize includes $25,000 in 

seed money.

IPAT wins Pappajohn Iowa Business Plan Award

Iowa Powder Atomization Technologies plans 

to use several Ames Lab-developed technologies 

to make fine spherical titanium powder for use in 

military, biomedical and aerospace applications. 

Their technique will increase the efficiency of the 

titanium powder making process and, thus, lower the 

cost of the powder to manufacturers.

4 Inquiry Issue 2 | 2012 

Prozorov named APS Fellow

Ames Laboratory physicist Ruslan Prozorov was 

selected as an American Physical Society Fellow. He 

was chosen for “high-resolution measurements of 

the London penetration depth of superconductors.” 

Prozorov was nominated by the APS Division of 

Condensed Matter Physics.

Prozorov, who is also an 

associate professor of physics 

at Iowa State University, 

specializes in understanding 

the electromagnetic response 

of superconducting, magnetic, 

hybrid and nanosized materials 

at low temperatures.

Clem receives IEEE 

Superconductivity Award

John R. Clem, senior physicist emeritus, 

Ames Laboratory and Distinguished Professor 

of Physics Emeritus, Iowa State University, was 

selected to receive the 2012 IEEE Council On 

Superconductivity Award for 

Significant and Sustained 

Contributions to Applied 

Superconductivity. The 

award, consisting of a plaque, 

a medallion made of niobium, 

and an honorarium, were 

presented at the 2012 Applied Superconductivity 

Conference in Portland, Ore. Ruslan Prozorov

John Clem
Ames Laboratory recently partnered with the Iowa 

Waste Reduction Center at the University of Northern 

Iowa to improve spray paint training using a virtual 

engineering software toolkit. The software enhancements 

won a regional Federal Laboratory Consortium award for 

applying federally developed technology to industry needs.

VirtualPaint software, developed by the Iowa Waste 

Reduction Center, is a painting simulator designed to teach 

military personnel, commercial painters and other paint 

spray technicians the correct techniques for spray paint 

operations. Practicing paint skills in a virtual environment 

rather than a spray booth reduces hazardous air emissions, 

saves paint and reduces travel time for paint trainees.

IWRC staff sought to expand the capabilities of 

VirtualPaint and knew they needed a software solution that 

could handle the program’s large data models and maintain 

realistic real-time virtual painting simulations. Ames 

Laboratory’s VE-Suite, an open source virtual engineering 

software toolkit, fit the job.

Virtual Reality 

spray paint training software

wins FLC Award

Deb Covey (center), Ames Laboratory associate director for 

sponsored research administration, accepts the Federal Laboratory Consortium Midcontinent Excellence in Technology Transfer 

award for improvement to VirtualPaint. Susan Sprake (left), FLC 

Midcontinent coordinator, presents the award, joined by Karina 

Edmonds (right), the Department of Energy’s technology transfer 

coordinator.

Inquiry Issue 2 | 2012 5

Thomas Barton, retired director 

o f t h e A m e s L a b o r a t o r y a n d 

distinguished professor emeritus of 

chemistry at Iowa State University, 

has been elected president of the 

American Chemical Society. During 

his three-year succession, Barton will 

serve as ACS president-elect for 2013, 

president of the society in 2014 and 

immediate past-president in 2015 and 

will also serve on the board of directors.

Barton said his priorities will be improving elementary 

and secondary science education in America, boosting 

the public’s appreciation of chemistry and addressing 

employment and globalization issues.

Erin MacDonald, an affiliated 

researcher at the Ames Laboratory and 

an assistant professor of mechanical 

engineering at Iowa State, recently 

received the ASME Design Automation 

Young Investigator Award. The award 

recognizes an outstanding young 

investigator who is making noteworthy 

contributions in the area of design 

automation, including research 

in design representation, design 

optimization, design evaluation, and/

or design integration.

MacDonald selected for ASME 

Young Investigator Award

Erin MacDonald

Thomas Barton

Barton elected president 

of the American Chemical Society
6 Inquiry Issue 2 | 2012 

Ames Laboratory scientist John McClelland and his 

research team are working with the U.S. Department 

of Homeland Security and the National Institute of 

Justice to develop a comprehensive data bank of printing 

inks and toners as well as computer search software for 

sample identification. 

It’s a painstaking job, building the database

“Our researchers are in the process of collecting samples 

from manufacturers, and it’s been a slow process, since 

inks and toners are highly proprietary. They understand the 

importance of what we’re doing, but we’ve been signing a lot 

of non-disclosure agreements,” says McClelland about the 

project under way.

n the justice system, a material witness possesses 

knowledge or expertise so vital to the case that their 

testimony is critical to the outcome of the trial. 

The field of science itself has become a material 

witness and just as vital to the justice system and homeland 

security, as demand grows for an ever higher degree of 

scientific accuracy and reliability in the investigation of 

forensic evidence. 

The Ames Laboratory has built an international 

reputation inmaterials science, including the development of 

advanced tools and techniques for materials characterization 

of surfaces, structure, chemistry, and physical behaviors. 

While the principal mission of the laboratory is finding 

solutions to energy challenges, these new and increasingly 

accurate and sophisticated characterization techniques 

have key benefits in other fields, such as homeland security 

and forensic science. 

Ames Laboratory’s excellence in materials 

characterization makes the Midwest Forensics Resource 

Center a good fit for the Lab, which oversees the program 

in partnership with Iowa State University’s Institute of 

Physical Research and Technology. The MFRC brings 

together the Ames Laboratory’s unique research capabilities 

to support the needs of crime laboratories in 16 states in 

areas as diverse as molecular and elemental spectroscopy of 

inks and toners, fracture analysis, toolmark identification, 

and bloodstain analysis.

Finding print media’s true signature: ink analysis

In the discipline of questioned documents investigation, 

one of the key clues to verifying the authenticity of a 

signature or the document itself is the ink on the page. The 

MFRC is researching ways to bring a higher degree of speed 

and accuracy to ink analysis.

I

Material Witness:

B y L aura M illsaps

Taylor Grieve, graduate research assistant in the MFRC, prepares 

a tool mark sample for scanning by profilometer.

 Midwest Forensics 

 Resource Center lends 

 scientific expertise to 

 law enforcement

A side-by-side stacked comparison of the infrared spectra of 

450 different inks and toners. The Midwest Forensics Resource 

Center is assisting the Department of Homeland Security and 

the National Institute of Justice to establish a comprehensive 

databank of printing inks and toners.
Inquiry Issue 2 | 2012 7

The researchers are using multiple spectroscopic 

analytical techniques to characterize samples: mass 

spectrometry, infrared spectroscopy , and x-ray fluorescence. 

Ames Laboratory scientist Tonu Reinot has developed 

computer search algorithms and software that combines 

and interprets the data from all three of the techniques. 

“We find that this approach provides search capability 

that is more robust, and less subject to false alarms,” says 

McClelland. “This is particularly important as more and 

more ink data is put in the library and increasingly only 

small differences exist between various inks in the library.”

The MFRC also helped the U.S. Secret Service, one of the 

foremost questioned document authorities, in establishing 

a similar database for handwriting inks. For decades, the 

Secret Service maintained an extensive library of physical 

ink samples, along with thin-layer chromatography data that 

identified the unique characteristics of each ink.

“The problem with thin-layer chromatography is it’s fairly 

time consuming, and not a really easy thing to implement 

when you have many samples to test and identify,” says 

McClelland of the process, which uses an adsorbent material 

on a plate to separate out various analytes of a substance. 

McClelland’s research group tested a variety of techniques, 

including infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy and 

also a relatively new mass spectrometry (MS) technique 

called Direct Analysis in Real Time-MS (DART-MS), 

which allows a substance to be analyzed without sample 

preparation and in the open air. 

“It turned out that mass spectra are the most definitive 

for searching and identifying an unknown sample against 

a database of known samples,” says McClelland. “Thin 

layer chromatography is a respected analytic technique; but 

mass spectrometry is more easily applied, and you can get 

more detail in a mass spectra analysis than in a thin layer 

chromatogram. It’s a better fingerprint, you could say.”

Break in the case: fracture analysis

Often a crime or accident scene is littered with evidence 

that comes in pieces: shattered plastic, glass or metal, torn 

fabric or tape. It’s up to forensic investigators to determine how 

the pieces of the evidence, and therefore the story, fit together. 

A team of materials scientists is applying fracture 

analysis methods to the study of broken knife blade tips to 

determine if there is a scientific methodology that can be 

applied to bolster visual inspection of evidence.

“Much of the forensic examiner’s work is by eye, to see 

if they can match one piece of a broken object to another,” 

says Barbara Lograsso, associate scientist with the Ames 

Laboratory. “Instead of only trying to match the surfaces 

visually, we want to be able to show that a technique can 

significantly and measurably discriminate between matches 

and nonmatches.”

The scientists are analyzing the fractured surface areas 

using a 3-D interferometer, which generates a surface height 

topographical map of the surfaces. A MATLAB software 

program was developed to “read” the data and perform 

match analyses. At this level of analysis, the scientists can 

provide a lot more detail about the fractured surfaces.

“Some of those features are quite unique to the event,” says 

Ashraf Bastawros, an Ames Lab associate and an associate 

professor of aerospace engineering at Iowa State University 

who specializes in fracture mechanics. “If I break two surfaces 

I will find some commonalities because they are from the 

same material, but the additional information is how it was 

broken. Was it bent? Or bent and twisted? All of those leave 

unique characteristics on the surface of the fracture.”

That precise level of detail may be vital in cases where 

visual inspection of evidence isn’t sufficient to prove a 

definite match.

 “Investigators may have pieces that broke a couple of 

times and you cannot put it together like a jigsaw puzzle,” 

says Bastawros. “There may be pieces missing altogether. 

So when you cannot do that, this method can tell more from 

the unique fractured surface characteristics, something less 

likely to be disputed in court.”

 “What forensic examiners don’t have right now is 

a technique or process that has some determination 

of uncertainty, a statistical error rate, to bolster their 

judgment,” says Lograsso. “We hope to provide that with a 

method and citable literature.”

They also intend to produce an open-source software 

program that allows an image of the material sample to 

A sample broken knife blade. MFRC scientists are researching 

methods to describe the unique characteristics of fractured 

surfaces to aid in forensic investigation.
8 Inquiry Issue 2 | 2012 

be analyzed, with statistical tools to quantify the quality 

of a match. 

“It’s not possible to measure the total population of all 

possible specimens, but we’ve got a start with knife tips,” 

Bastawros says. “We’ll be measuring some materials and 

once we finish the basic platform, it will have a lot of other 

applications. We are now working in metal, but it could be 

applied to ceramics, plastic or glass.”

The tools to build a case: impression evidence analysis

Criminals often leave their mark in the most literal 

sense—marks left by scrapes and impacts of common 

household objects like tools. Forensic examiners are tasked 

with matching this impression evidence to a tool, under the 

assumption that individual tools and their marks are unique. 

“That’s been the problem,” says Scott Chumbley, an 

Ames Laboratory materials scientist. “I’ve worked with 

many examiners and they have a high level of experience 

and integrity. When they say there’s a match, I’ve agreed 

with them. But an attorney can always argue ‘this is just 

your opinion.’ So that became the question. If you have a 

tool, can you show quantitatively that the marks left by it 

are unique to only that tool?” 

Chumbley joined with Max Morris, an associate 

professor in the departments of statistics, and industrial 

and manufacturing systems engineering at Iowa State 

University, to find out if they could develop a way to 

computationally compare toolmarks to the tool that 

made it, resulting in statistically valid matches.

They began with a common toolbox item, a flat 

head screwdriver. 

“That was the starting point,” says Morris. “Practically 

speaking, it was not going to get them where they need to 

be in the crime lab, with a database of hundreds of types of 

tools, but you have to start with a version of the problem you 

can get your hands around.”

The research team obtained 50 screwdrivers that were 

sequentially made on the same manufacturing line. Striations 

were made by dragging screwdriver tips across sheets of 

lead at set angles, and traced using both stylus and optical 

profilometers. Morris developed a statistical algorithm to 

analyze the toolmarks and compare them with a tool, with the 

aim of determining whether the tool and toolmarks match. 

“We’ve shown that you can have 50 screw drivers that are 

nearly as identical as possible coming off the manufacturing 

line, and we are still able to tell one from the other with fairly 

high degree of certainty,” says Chumbley. 

The research team is now studying another common tool, 

slip joint pliers, and the marks they leave when cutting wire. 

“It’s a more complicated version of the original 

research,” says Chumbley. “In this situation we have two 

separate cut marks, different from each other but related 

to the same tool.”

Song Zhang, an associate professor of mechanical 

engineering at Iowa State University and a specialist 

in facial recognition technology, is developing an open 

source computer program to generate sample toolmarks 

for comparison, using Chumbley and Morris’ research as 

a foundation.

“The idea is to scan a tool tip, get a 3-D representation, 

and then write a software program that can generate any 

possible mark from that tool in the virtual world, in any way 

that we want, with any resolution we want, at any angle we 

want,” says Zhang. 

 Zhang envisions a system, possibly portable, that relies 

on an optical profilometer to scan marks and tool tips. 

Researchers collect toolmark samples by dragging a screwdriver tip across a lead plate. Scientists at the MFRC have developed 

statistical algorithms to compare toolmarks to tools and determine matches. Ultimately researchers hope to develop a software program that can generate virtual tool marks for comparison to a sample tool.
Inquiry Issue 2 | 2012 9

“Optical profilometers present some design challenges 

because of data quality, but they are preferred by forensic 

examiners because they don’t touch the sample and 

compromise evidence,” he says. 

The program could simplify much of the painstaking 

sample comparisons that forensic examiners do to 

substantiate a match. 

“This software tool will eliminate a lot of the possibilities 

they might otherwise have to consider before making a 

determination. We will still need forensic examiners to 

make the final judgment.”

A pattern of evidence: blood impact spatter analysis

It’s often the most disturbing evidence of a crime: 

spatters of blood on floors, walls, and other objects. But the 

patterns formed by these droplets can give investigators a 

better picture of how a criminal event unfolded.

David Baldwin, director of the MFRC, says what’s been 

missing from blood spatter study is basic research. 

“There was a lot of forensic training that went on where 

they said ‘this is what happened and this is what you see 

at the end.’ But they didn’t really know how it got there. 

People were trained based on experience at crime scenes, 

not as physicists or as fluid dynamicists. Their explanations 

may not have made any realistic sense to a scientist.”

To fill the need for research, the MFRC has amassed 

a library of 500 video clips of blood spatter experiments 

showing how blood as a fluid behaves when it falls or spatters 

in relation to objects like bullets, cloth, wood and tools. 

“The library is one of our best products, and it’s used 

constantly. It has very quickly become invaluable to crime 

scene analysts,” says Baldwin. 

The MFRC is continuing that research by characterizing 

blood impact spatter, or what happens when an object 

strikes an open source of blood. 

“This is basic science. This is physics,” says Baldwin. 

“I want to understand the parameters that are involved in 

determining the appearance of bloodstain patterns. No one’s 

really bothered to study the physics of the distribution, the 

size of the drops, their locations, and how they are affected 

by physical parameters that might matter, like velocity and 

mass. If we don’t do these types of physics experiments, 

we won’t know that you can or can’t say anything definitive 

about those end products.”

Baldwin’s team of scientists is conducting experiments 

by constructing a rig or apparatus in a controlled lab 

environment that eliminates extraneous crime scene details. 

“This is a very physics-oriented experiment where 

we control the surface area, the depth of the blood, the 

diameter of the pool, the velocity of the impact, the diameter 

of interaction. Our goal is to determine parameters for the 

distribution of stains that are relevant and tell us something 

about what happened,” says Baldwin. 

Though the focus of this research is understanding the 

physics of blood spatter, Baldwin says he could foresee 

technology that takes an image of blood spatter at a crime 

scene and analyzes the possible causes, “but that’s in a 

farther-off future.”

Blood impact spatter research and the more than 60 

other research projects supported by the MFRC over the 

past decade, says Baldwin, are part of the ongoing effort to 

bring more exacting science to evidence investigation. 

“The entire discipline of forensics is about trying to 

say something based on the end observables, without any 

control over or knowledge about what happened on the front 

end,” explains Baldwin. “Scientists would call that inverse 

problem engineering. Because of the growing demand in 

the justice system for a citable scientific justification for 

admitting physical evidence, we’re here to help forensic 

investigators do just that.”

 

A series of still photos from a high speed video of a blood 

impact spatter experiment. Researchers at the MFRC are 

studying the physics of how blood spatter is formed under 

different variables such as the quantity of blood and the 

velocity of impact.

A single frame of a high speed video of blood impact spatter.
ny institution has recognizable landmarks. 

But it’s not the bricks and mortar that define the 

place. People are necessary to give it character, 

reputation and unique qualities – in other 

words, a face. An organization requires people quite 

literally as its life blood.

The Ames Laboratory is no exception. The Lab’s 

character and reputation rely on the intellectual power of 

its researchers’ minds to drive the engine of discovery. And 

while there are requisite staff who are vital to help keep 

that engine finely tuned and humming, the Lab exists 

because of the knowledge, expertise and curiosity of its 

researchers.

So how do you put a face on the Ames Laboratory? 

That’s a tough call, given the wide range of fields of study, 

personalities, backgrounds, ages and interests to be found 

among its researchers. But despite their differences, they 

all possess a keen interest in what they do and work hard 

to solve the unanswered questions in front of them.

While it’s not possible to share the stories of all of the 

Lab’s 250 some scientists and engineers, here’s a closer 

look at just a few of the 

A

of The Ames Laboratory

10 Inquiry Issue 2 | 2012 
In her spare time, Emily Smith loves to go hiking in places 

such as Bryce Canyon National Park.

team. It’s built into the infrastructure and culture from the 

way projects are funded and the research is conducted, to 

the way results are published.”

That also provides an advantage for students studying 

under Smith, giving them opportunities they would not 

typically have in a strictly academic setting. And training the 

next generation(s) of researchers is an important measure as 

Smith views her career.

“I don’t have Nobel aspirations,” she says with a chuckle. 

“I hope in the next 10 to 20 years, that I’ve built a solid 

reputation and helped move technology forward... and that I 

still enjoy coming to work every day! But I’m more interested 

in seeing how my students progress and the contributions 

they make to the field. Their success will hopefully be a 

reflection on me as their mentor.”

 

builder I’m an instrument builder

Rock climbing is also one of Emily 

Smith’s outdoor pursuits. 

n e l e m e n t a r y s c h o o l e x p e r i m e n t 

t o i d e n t i f y s e v e r a l c o m m o n h o u s e h o l d 

“compounds” was all it took to hook Ames 

Laboratory researcher Emily Smith on the field of 

analytical chemistry.

“It was probably fourth grade and we had several 

substances that we were supposed to identify, based on their 

properties,” Smith says. “I think there was sugar and baking 

soda ... I don’t remember the rest. What I do remember is 

that I was fascinated by how we analyzed things like crystal 

structure or pH to figure out what they were.”

That keen interest in finding out what makes up 

materials still drives Smith’s career as she uses state-ofthe-art instruments to analyze the various composite parts 

of various types of biomass in search of the best feedstocks 

for producing biofuels. Her work includes developing new 

instrumentation, such as a scanning angle total internal 

reflection Raman microscope which, by changing the angle 

of a laser directed on the sample, can provide a 3-D image of 

the sample’s chemical content.

“When people ask what I do, I usually say I’m an 

instrument builder,” Smith explains. “I work to solve 

problems and answer questions by finding new ways to 

measure the chemical makeup of samples. “

Like many Ames Lab researchers, Smith also holds a 

faculty appointment at Iowa State University. Recruited 

by well-known Ames Lab and ISU 

analytical chemist Ed Yeung in 2006, 

she’s currently seeking tenure in addition 

to her regular duties in the research 

lab and the chemistry classroom. That 

academic and national laboratory duality 

provides the best of both worlds and was key in her decision 

to move to Ames, which is unique in having a national lab 

physically colocated on a college campus.

“You wear two hats, but you also get to take advantage 

of both sides,” Smith says. “In academia, you’re typically 

conducting more focused research on your own, where the 

national lab system requires you to be part of a collaborative 

A

Emily S M I T H

B y K erry G ibson

Inquiry Issue 2 | 2012 11
12 Inquiry Issue 2 | 2012 

aron Bryden was on a two-week research 

field trip in high school, camping and collecting 

data on frog habitats, when he realized what he 

wanted to do when he grew up. It wasn’t the frogs 

that caught his attention. It was the amount of data he and 

his classmates generated.

“I could already see then that we were creating a huge 

amount of information and that the data we were collecting 

would be most useful visualized in map form, and it was 

then that I figured out that I wanted to use computer tools to 

help understand large amounts of data,” says Bryden.

As an undergrad at Iowa State University, Bryden 

helped with research at ISU’s Virtual Reality Applications 

Center, and he started an informal collaboration with Ames 

Laboratory scientists who developed VE-Suite, a virtual 

engineering software toolkit. 

“For my graduate work at the University of Wisconsin, 

I worked with the visualization of proteins,” Bryden says. 

“So, it was a natural progression to try the techniques for 

other atomic structures. And since I had stayed connected 

to the ideas in VE-Suite, I returned to Ames Laboratory for 

a postdoctoral post.”

Bryden is now expanding the use of VE-Suite, first 

designed to engineer complex systems like power plants, to 

materials science.

“I’m using some of the visualization tools in VE-Suite 

and applying them to understanding data from atom probe 

microscopy experiments,” says Bryden. “We modified a 

technique known as spherical imposter rendering so that we 

can now visualize and interact with a 10-million-atom data 

experimental data set.”

For these types of data, 

scientists would perhaps 

not draw quantitative 

conclusions from just 

a look at the visualized 

data. But, Bryden and his 

colleagues believe that 

seeing materials science 

data more accurately and 

efficiently can help guide scientists’ experimentation and 

analysis, and, ultimately, help guide the overall search for 

new and better materials.

“My work in materials science is a bit odd, because I 

don’t do much creating or characterization of materials 

myself,” says Bryden. “But it’s exciting to be part of the larger 

community and really help people understand their data 

more effectively.”

 “Working with the materials scientists at Ames Laboratory 

is opening up new areas to apply my research,” says Bryden. 

“Ames Lab is giving me opportunities I wouldn’t have 

anywhere else.” 

Bryden’s next aim is a staff researcher at a national 

laboratory or faculty member at a university.

“It’s funny that all these years later after that frog research 

field-trip, I’m still doing the same sorts of things,” he says.

Outside of work, Bryden still loves to travel, the outdoors 

and hiking. He recently made a trip to Honduras and plans 

to trek in Chile later this year. 

“And at work, just like with the frog habitat data in high 

school, my whole goal is still to use visualization to help 

people do better science and engineering.”

A

AaronB r y d e n

by B reehan G erleman L ucchesi

... Ames Lab is giving me opportunities I wouldn’t have anywhere else.”

... Ames Lab is giving me opportunities I wouldn’t have anywhere else.”
Inquiry Issue 2 | 2012 13

Vela’s father helped spark his son’s interest in science and 

technology. A chemical engineer by training, the elder Vela 

worked “as an IT guy” at the research center of a large power 

company in Mexico where Javier often visited. Influenced 

by his high school chemistry teacher and his subsequent 

participation in Chemistry Olympiad, he majored in 

chemistry at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico 

in Mexico City where he graduated with honors in 2001.

“I came to the United States for grad school at the 

University of Rochester where I worked mostly in catalysis 

and inorganic metallics, and developed an interest in 

materials,” he says.

That led to postdoctoral appointments at the University 

of Chicago and Los Alamos National Laboratory. It was a 

trip between Chicago and New Mexico that gave Vela his 

first exposure to Iowa.

“My car broke down just outside Iowa City on 

Thanksgiving Day,” Vela says. “I’d never been in Iowa and 

had heard it was just corn fields, but the people were great 

and I had one of the best Thanksgiving dinners I’ve ever 

had.”

That exposure to Iowa stuck with him and when 

he began looking for an academic position and to 

form an independent research group, he gave Iowa State 

University a serious look.

“Iowa State’s chemistry department had an excellent 

reputation, and (former chemical and biological sciences 

program director) Victor Lin was very supportive,” Vela says. 

“I was also aware of Ames Lab and its strength in materials 

research from working at Los Alamos. And Ames is a safe, 

low-stress place to live so it was a great opportunity.”

Vela has been making the most of that opportunity, 

studying the fabrication, characterization and properties 

of novel heterostructured nanomaterials, a key tool in 

developing catalysts to solve the biofuels problem mentioned 

above. And Ames Lab has been vital in those efforts.

“Ames Lab has obviously been extremely helpful in 

the scientific area. Electron microscopy is very important 

to what we do, and the Lab provides us access to those 

resources,” Vela says. 

“A large part of developing new technologies is convincing 

the public, the taxpayers if you will, that this is actually 

worth investing in,” Vela adds. “The Lab helps by reaching 

out to the public, raising awareness and building advocacy. 

Without that help, we wouldn’t be able to conduct our 

research at such a high level.”

Javier V e la

s a boy growing up in Mexico, Javier 

Vela took an early interest in science and planned 

to become an engineer or a physicist. But an 

“excellent” high school chemistry teacher helped 

steer him onto the path to perhaps solving one of the 

stumbling blocks that’s hampering the biofuels industry.

“My ultimate scientific goal is show the viability of 

photocatalysis – to convert biomass into fuel using only 

sunlight as the driving force,” says Vela, who is in his third 

year as an Ames Lab chemist. “We’re working to develop 

catalysts that can harness solar energy and turn it into 

chemical energy. Basically take water or biomass and turn it 

into hydrogen or other fuels.”

A

B y K erry G ibson

Javier Vela enjoys camping, complete with roasted marshmallows, 

when he’s not working in his research lab or teaching chemistry.

“ ... we wouldn’t be able to conduct 

 our research at such a high level.” 
R yanO tt

“When I was in high school, I found I enjoyed 

the chemistry and physics and even math classes. 

But I didn’t love any of them enough on their 

own. I liked them all put together,” says Ott.

When it came time to choose a major in 

college, Ott was browsing the course catalog 

and came across an entry for metallurgical and 

materials engineering.

“I noticed that the major seemed to combine 

all the subjects I liked, and I thought ‘well, that 

looks interesting,’” says Ott. “It was just the 

thinking of a relatively naïve 18-year-old, but 

all these years later, I know it was a good 

decision.”

Ott now sees his role as helping to bridge 

the gap between fundamental materials 

research and developing and improving 

energy technologies. For instance, he’s now 

Ames Laboratory’s lead researcher on a project 

to help improve the processing techniques 

to reclaim rare-earth materials. The project 

harnesses fundamental materials science to help 

address possible shortages in rare earths, which 

are necessary ingredients in many green-energy 

technologies.

“At heart, we need to do fundamental research 

to solve many of the big scientific challenges we 

are facing,” says Ott. “My goal is to provide the 

connection between that fundamental science 

and an application to create new technologies.”

The Ames Laboratory is helping Ott reach 

his goals, and he hopes to stay and establish a 

research group that focuses on a range of topics 

that are important to energy technologies.

“Here at the Ames Lab there is just a large 

amount of materials synthesis and research 

capability,” says Ott. “Working here puts you in 

contact with collaborators and staff that are just 

excellent sources of knowledge. That’s especially 

notable in rare-earth research, where Ames Lab 

has very long and distinguished history.”

 “My work is interesting and you really have to 

be able to shift gears from one day to another to 

tackle different projects,” adds Ott. “It requires 

you to be constantly thinking about what’s next 

for everything you’re working on.”

And what better way to do some thinking than 

in the quiet of the forest? 

“I have about four different devices that 

keep me in constant email contact,” says Ott. 

“But when I’m out backpacking, I leave all that 

behind. It’s great.”

“My goal is to provide the connection between that fundamental 

science and an application to create new technologies.”

by B r ee han G e r l e man L ucch e s i

h e n R y a n O t t g e t s aw a y, h e r e a l ly g e t s 

away, backpacking into the Canadian wilderness. 

“We canoe across a few lakes and tent in,” says Ott. 

“We’re off the grid with no contact with the outside 

world. Just eating the fish we catch.”

“And when I’m backpacking, I like to go new places and explore 

different areas,” he continues.

Ott’s zest for variety can be seen in his career as a materials 

researcher. His work spans nanostructured materials, mechanical 

behavior of materials, materials synthesis, X-ray synchrotron 

characterization of materials, and critical materials, like rare earths.

“I’d say I’m all over the board,” says Ott. “And that’s one of the 

things that keeps me interested. I like that I’m not confined to one 

narrow area of research.”

In fact, variety is what originally drew Ott to materials science 

and engineering. 

W

14 Inquiry Issue 2 | 2012 
RobM c Quee n e y

ob McQueeney spends one or two lunch 

hours a week on the basketball court, playing 

against fellow scientists and researchers.

“I was a late-comer to basketball, because I 

didn’t play in high school,” says McQueeney. “But, now I 

have height, the one thing you can’t coach”

While McQueeney was late to his lunchtime hobby, he 

knew early on that he wanted to spend the rest of his days 

as a scientist.

“One Christmas, my parents gave me a choice between 

getting an Atari video game system and a telescope, and 

I chose the telescope,” says McQueeney. “I was always 

interested in space and deep sea exploration.”

A fear of water ruled out studying the sea, so he double 

majored in chemistry and physics, and completed graduate 

school in physics at the University of Pennsylvania.

“High-temperature superconductors was a new field then. 

My graduate advisor was using neutron scattering to study 

superconductors, among other materials,” says McQueeney. 

“And neutron scattering was what I grabbed onto.”

Neutron scattering helps scientists understand the 

atomic and magnetic structures of materials, along with how 

the atoms in the structure vibrate when energy is added to 

the material. Neutron scattering requires specialized, largescale instruments that are only located at a few facilities 

throughout the country. 

From graduate school, McQueeney accepted a 

postdoctoral research job at just such a facility, Los Alamos 

National Laboratory, where he was responsible for the Pharos 

spectrometer at the Lujan Center for neutron scattering.

“I came to the Ames Laboratory and Iowa State University 

in 2003 because I knew both had long histories in neutron 

scattering,” says McQueeney. “But I soon realized that the 

more important asset here at the Ames Lab is the people. I 

get to work with scientists who focus on new materials. So, 

yes, I have my expertise in my neutron scattering, but the 

really valuable thing is when a new material is discovered, 

like the iron-based superconductors that were discovered in 

2008, I’m able to collaborate with Ames Lab colleagues by 

saying, ‘these are the kinds of things we can learn by neutron 

scattering.’”

McQueeney travels to neutron scattering facilities to 

perform his experiments and collect data.

 “The real work starts when you come back, analyzing the 

data and developing models,” says McQueeney. “I like that. 

Doing calculations and fitting models to data gives me the 

opportunity to really think about the scientific challenges I 

can help solve.”

“Getting to help answer scientific questions was a life-long 

goal of mine, and I’m happy where I am,” adds McQueeney. 

“But, that’s not to say there aren’t bigger projects to take 

on out there, like making sure that our neutron scattering 

research community is a healthy one.”

McQueeney is now serving in a special Department 

of Energy Office of Science post to support the neutron 

scattering program, a job that requires visiting scattering 

facilities with his “DOE hat on.”

Whether he visits with his DOE hat on or his Ames 

Laboratory hat on, McQueeney always remembers to bring 

something else: his basketball shoes. 

“A lot of guys at the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak 

Ridge play ball, and I like to get into a few games there, too.”

R

by B reehan G erleman L ucchesi

Inquiry Issue 2 | 2012 15

“Getting to help answer scientific questions was a life-long goal of mine, ... ”
16 Inquiry Issue 2 | 2012 

Karl

ven after 61 years, showing up at the office 

most work days is never a chore for Ames Lab senior 

metallurgist Karl Gschneidner Jr. And the main 

reason this world-renown researcher, affectionately 

known as “Mr. Rare Earth,” comes to work is the same one 

that’s powered him from the start – he’s having fun!

“If it wasn’t still fun, I’d have retired years ago,” Gschneidner 

says. “I enjoy what I do and have always tried to do my best. 

There’s still plenty to learn so I keep at it!”

His crowded office in Spedding Hall is a testament to 

Gschneidner’s reputation and staying power. Dozens of 

awards, including a National 

Academy of Engineering 

membership, cover a fair 

amount of the available wall 

space, and floor-to-ceiling 

bookcases hold a career’s 

worth of reference materials. Multiple file cabinets hold 

volumes of notes, presentations and articles and neat stacks of 

unfiled work cover the tops of a desk and two tables. Much of 

it bears Gschneidner’s name –he published his 500th refereed 

research journal article earlier this summer, in addition 

to untold numbers of presentations, lectures and keynote 

addresses.

An early love of chemistry and physics set Gschneidner on 

his career path, but it wasn’t until he attended graduate school 

at Iowa State University, and worked as a research associate 

at Ames Laboratory, that he became involved in the study of 

rare earths.

“I’d been interested in the metallic elements alloys, but it 

wasn’t until I came here that I began working with rare-earth 

materials,” he says, “and Ames Laboratory has always been 

THE place when it comes to the rare earths. It was such a 

fascinating field, I never really considered anything else.”

Advances in technology, particular computational power 

and refinements in analytic instrumentation, have been 

invaluable to Gschneidner’s work.

“One of my first assignments as a new graduate student 

was to produce a 500-gram sample of gadolinium for another 

senior grad student to study,” he explains. “It took him months 

of work to plot the heat capacity as a function of temperature. 

The chart was a roll of paper that extended clear down the hall.

“Now, we can take a very small sample, put it in the 

calorimeter and the process is entirely automated,” he 

continues. “We can get the same results overnight that required 

months before. You can’t beat that.”

Gadolinium has been one of several focal points of his 

research, particularly its ability to exhibit a giant magnetocaloric 

effect, or GMCE – it heats up when exposed to a magnetic field 

and cools down when the field is withdrawn. Gschneidner was 

instrumental in development of refrigerators that harnessed 

this phenomenon in place of traditional gas-compressiondriven cooling.

“The biggest stumbling block we now face is coming up 

with a GMCE material that doesn’t progressively break 

down into smaller pieces over the billions of magnetization/

demagnetization cycles required for a 15-20-year appliance 

life,” he says. “We also need to reduce the time dependence of 

the transformation.”

Based on the current pace of research and the growing 

number of working prototypes around the world, Gschneidner 

expects magnetic refrigeration to become commercially viable 

by 2016 or so, a fruition he plans to witness. 

“We’re finding all kinds of new phenomena in low 

temperature and low magnetic field research,” he says, “and 

that’s what brings me back to the laboratory.” 

B y K erry G ibson

E

G s c h n e idn e r

Weather permitting, Karl Gschneidner still rides his bike 

several miles back and forth to work every day as he has for 

much of his tenure at the Ames Laboratory.

“Ames Laboratory has always been THE 

place when it comes to the rare earths.”
Inquiry Issue 2 | 2012 17

Ning F ang

B y S teve K arsjen

he thought of not having access to a 

computer in today’s elementary classrooms would 

be hard to imagine. But in 1986, when Ning Fang 

was a fourth grader in China, there were only four 

computers in the entire school, and very few students were 

“qualified” to use them. Luckily Fang was one of them. 

“They experimented with us to see how we could achieve 

new concepts and other things, and I ended up taking part in 

a lot of computer competitions,” says Fang, who remembers 

coming in second in a prestigious high school information 

olympics competition in his province.

Equal to his love of computers, however, was Fang’s 

interest in chemistry and mathematics, in which he excelled 

as a student and academic competitor. “I was lucky to be 

able to combine all of my strengths, which helped form the 

basis for my love of science.”

Fast forward 25 years to his present-day office in Hach 

Hall, Iowa State University’s chemistry building where Fang 

sits comfortably with not one, but two computers within 

arm’s reach. A research scientist at the Ames Laboratory 

and an assistant professor of Chemistry at Iowa State, 

Fang’s research focuses on chemical and biological discovery 

through novel optical imaging of single molecules. Although 

computers don’t hold quite the same sway over him they used 

to, they’re still “a critically important tool” to write the code 

for his imaging research. 

Like many young people, Fang remembers back to a 

special moment that helped changed his life. It began with a 

conversation about college with his uncle, who happened to 

be a chemistry professor at a college in China. 

“I was planning on majoring in computer science,” says 

Ning. “But when he found that I also loved chemistry, he 

suggested that I study chemistry and use the computer 

as my tool. He was very open minded and saw the future 

of research.” 

Fang took his uncle’s advice and studied chemistry at 

China’s Xiamen University, with a double major in computer 

science. Upon graduation, he was accepted for graduate 

school at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver 

where he majored in chemistry. 

While in graduate school, Fang began focusing on chemical 

separations using traditional chemical analysis tools, such as 

capillary electrophoresis (CE), which he used to analyze the 

drug MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy. His research caught 

the eye of Ed Yeung, now a retired Ames Laboratory scientist 

and the inventor of multiplexed capillary electrophoresis 

(MCE), a chemical analysis device that’s considered the “gold 

standard” of DNA sequencing instrumentation. 

“I met with Ed three times at conferences, and felt very 

lucky and proud to be able to speak with him at length each 

time,” says Fang. 

It turns out Yeung also had reasons for the lengthy 

discussions because he eventually offered Fang the 

opportunity to be his postdoc at the Ames Lab and, ultimately, 

to take over his research program upon his retirement. 

Since moving to Ames in 2006, life at Ames Lab and 

Iowa State has been a dizzying balancing act. Between his 

research, his duties as assistant professor, and raising a family, 

which consists of a five year old and a four month old, he has 

precious little free time. But, like many modern dads 

he spends some time playing with his five year old on an 

iPad, but not a computer....yet. 

 “My wife doesn’t want him to touch computers 

too early,” Fang explains. 

Fang attended graduate school at the University of British 

Columbia in Vancouver where he majored in chemistry but 

minored, you might say, in snowboarding and skiing. “I 

achieved an advanced level in both,” chuckles Fang, who says 

he loved Vancouver so much that he spent six and a half years 

in graduate school. “It kind of delayed my graduation, but it 

was well worth it.” 

T

“I was lucky to be able to combine all of my strengths.”
18 Inquiry Issue 2 | 2012 

uriosity comes naturally to Tanya Prozorov.

As a child growing up in Moscow and now as a DOE 

Office of Science Early Career Research award 

winner, the desire to find out how things work has 

always been a driving force.

“For as long as I can remember, I wanted to know how 

people come up with what to make things of,” Prozorov says. 

“I was always bugging my dad about what things were made of 

and he finally told me, ‘if that’s what interests you, then that’s 

what you need to pursue with your education.’”

She followed that advice, getting two masters degrees 

in physical chemistry: one from the Moscow Institute of 

Steel and Alloys (now the National University of Science 

& Technology (NUST)), another from Bar-Ilan University, 

and a Ph.D. in Materials Chemistry from the University of 

Illinois, Urbana-Champaign under the supervision of wellknown researcher Kenneth Suslick. After a short post doctoral 

research appointment at the University of South Carolina, 

Prozorov landed in Ames when her husband, Ruslan, was 

hired as a faculty member in the Department of Physics and 

Astronomy at Iowa State University and a scientist at the Ames 

Laboratory.

Tanya started at the Lab as a post doc researcher, but now 

serves as an associate scientist. Research is her passion and 

she loves spending time in the laboratory.

“I’m not really interested in conventional classroom 

teaching,” Prozorov says. “Instead, I would love to put together 

a course in modern materials chemistry to emphasize the latest 

laboratory research techniques and instrumentation.”

Prozorov was selected for the Early Career award for a 

proposal to study the growth of nanoscale magnetic crystals 

in biological systems using a unique electron microscopy 

technique. Once this is understood, she hopes to able to grow 

such crystals in the lab and make better magnetic materials. 

“I have several fundamental questions regarding the 

biomimetics, nanochemistry and nanomagnetism,” she says, 

“and I hope that my research will lead me to the answers.”

The Ames Laboratory is helping make that possible.

“I owe many thanks to many people at Ames Lab,” she 

explains. “I am new to tackling such a large project and 

receiving advice and guidance was a tremendous help and the 

facilities staff did a great job setting up the space. I was given 

the freedom to assemble a laboratory and funds to purchase 

the key equipment — a continuous flow liquid cell platform 

for the transmission electron microscope and a molecular 

printer for the specimen patterning.”

With two Ames Lab researchers living under the same roof, 

you might think the Prozorov family would talk shop about 

their discoveries, but that’s not always the case.

“We’re both very busy with our research so when we’re not 

working, we don’t have time to talk much about it,” Tanya says. 

“We spend most of our time at home with our five wonderful 

cats and our grown-up daughter. “Ruslan recently came to one 

of my presentations and I think he was surprised and interested 

in some of the work I’m doing.” 

C Tanya P ro z orov

“ ... I hope that my research will 

lead me to 

the answers.”

B y K erry G ibson
Inquiry Issue 2 | 2012 19

iscovery, by definition, is to obtain sight or 

knowledge of something for the first time. It could 

also describe what long-time chemist John Corbett has 

pursued most every day of his 60-plus-year career at 

Ames Laboratory.

“I’ve spent most of my career working with rare-earth and 

related metals trying to find novel or unusual compounds,” 

Corbett says, gesturing toward a period chart hanging on the wall 

in his office. “If you consider ternary compounds – some call them 

alloys – from just the metals, there are over 10,000 possibilities. So 

there’s lots to consider, and I just continue to run reactions and keep 

my eyes open.”

In keeping his eyes open, he and his coworkers have discovered 

hundreds of new materials, including the recent discovery of the first 

quasicrystal containing sodium, in a sodium-gold-gallium compound. 

A paper on that finding, to be published soon in Angewandte Chemie. 

will be the 485th of his career.

With the exception of a few days while he awaited proper 

clearance, Corbett has had the same office – 353 Spedding Hall – 

since he started at the Lab and Iowa State University in 1952. He 

wound up in Ames because at the time, “there were only three or four 

job openings in the whole country in inorganic chemistry, and one of 

the best was here. And at that time, you could count the number of 

solid-state inorganic chemists (in the U.S.) on one hand.”

Corbett chose that career path via a stint in the military during 

World War II. Coming out of high school in Yakima, Wash., he 

enlisted in the Navy rather than be drafted. He enrolled in officer 

training and was two years into becoming an engineer when the war 

ended, which also brought his Naval career to a halt.

“I had half an engineering degree, but had taken a number of 

chemistry courses, so I went back home to Washington and got 

a degree in chemistry,” he says, “then went on to get a Ph.D. in 

physical chemistry.”

He credits Ames Lab with making his work, particularly in the 

early years, possible.

“There was really nowhere else I could have done the work,” 

Corbett says. “The innovation of using nonreactive tantalum 

containers was developed here and allowed us to carry out 

reactions that weren’t possible before.”

Improvements in analytical instrumentation have 

also contributed greatly to the field and his work. The 

Ames Laboratory’s service capabilities and having 

“four diffractometers within 75 feet” of 

his office have made the work easier and 

produced much faster results.

Although he gave up classroom teaching after 

48 years, Corbett has no plans to give up research 

and passing along his expertise to additional 

generations of graduate students and postdocs.

“I’ve been very blessed and lucky. My health is 

still good and I’m still having fun,” he says. “Besides, 

I can’t imagine doing anything else!” 

D

JohnC orb e tt

B y K erry G ibson

“There was really nowhere else I could have done the work ... ” 

John Corbett looks at a model of one 

of the materials he discovered.
Ames Laboratory

111 Technical and Administrative Services Facility

Ames, Iowa 50011-3020

515-294-9557

www.ameslab.gov

2012

Issue 2