I earned my BS in Metallurgical Engineering at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in 1996 (yeah you read that right) after which I was a lieutenant in the US Navy and trained others in nuclear propulsion plant operation.  After the military I worked at GE’s R/D center in upstate NY from 2001 – 2016 where I focused on developing and using techniques using instrumented indentation, electron beams, and ion beams to characterize a wide variety of materials such as turbine alloys for jet engines, nuclear fuel cladding materials. CdTe thin film solar materials, SiC-based electronics, polymers, and even looking at burnt cheese spread on glass cooktops.  In 2016, I moved to Oregon and worked as a staff application scientist at Thermo Fisher Scientific in their demonstration lab.  My work entailed travelling around the world training others in basic to advanced operation of FIB tools, performing FIB demonstrations to support instrument sales, travelling to the factory in Czechia to develop new products and applications, and testing new hardware and software prior to release.  In fact, I first met Dr. Lang during one my trips out to UIUC!  In 2021 I took a position at Sandia National Laboratories as a materials scientist where I continue to focus on materials characterization.