David A Muller
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davidamuller.bsky.social
David A Muller
@davidamuller.bsky.social
380 followers 470 following 120 posts
"Learning more and more about less and less"
Materials Physics and Electron Microscopy at Cornell (he/him)

https://muller.research.engineering.cornell.edu/
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davidamuller.bsky.social
While Cornell has field theorists, we also have practitioners
Three horse are out standing in their field at the Cornell horse farm, with strong fall colors on the trees behind them
November 10, 2025 at 7:45 PM
davidamuller.bsky.social
Ducktober
Two wood ducks paddling together in Cayuga lake as the trees on the opposite shore are just starting to turn
October 7, 2025 at 11:50 PM
davidamuller.bsky.social
We had 35 participants at our summer school a few weeks ago testing this on their laptops. Turns out a Macbook M4 pro is almost as fast as a 10GB slice of an A100. From the school, here is a 1-hour reconstruction. (Data took a few seconds to record at the school in a crowded scope room)
Electron ptychography 3D reconstruction of SiC after 100 iterations, taking 1 hour. This is an animated depth section showing the depth slicing through a thin SiC film and its interface with an amorphous layer. A small hole drilled with a parked electron beam is visible in the top half of the image
August 5, 2025 at 5:12 PM
davidamuller.bsky.social
Our hands-on workshop on Electron #Ptychography ! ⚛️🧪 using our new fast python code starts tomorrow, Tuesday, July 8. Lecture Schedule is below, for folks who want to listen in on-line. We hope to post the tutorial and code walk through videos later.

cornell.zoom.us/j/9512638476...
Schedule of lectures for the ptychography workshop, from 8-11 July
July 8, 2025 at 4:19 AM
davidamuller.bsky.social
Took a break and conducted some pier review last week. 12/10
Seneca lake pier at Watkins glen Canandaiga lake pier at sunset. It has lots of little boat sheds
July 1, 2025 at 6:34 AM
davidamuller.bsky.social
Celebrating Hari’s thesis defense with a NaNbO3-themed cake. It is layered in 3D to match his paper rdcu.be/eiV0u
Hari starts (multi)slicing the cake decorated with M&Ms laid out in a perovskite lattice
June 16, 2025 at 10:51 PM
davidamuller.bsky.social
Very faint aurora in Ithaca
View over the Cornell golf course at night , looking North, showing one faint band of nitrogen plasma
June 3, 2025 at 5:45 AM
davidamuller.bsky.social
We're holding a hands-on workshop on Electron #Ptychography ! ⚛️🧪 using our new fast python code

When: July 8-11, Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Organizers: David Muller, Jim LeBeau, Steve Zeltmann

Applications on a rolling basis until full
www.ccmr.cornell.edu/facilities/p...
Flyer for ptychography workshop, with pretty pictures of improved resolution
April 16, 2025 at 6:10 AM
davidamuller.bsky.social
This has been going for a while. When I worked at Lumon, erm Lucent Technologies in the late 90’s this similarity was also noted, but that is was also inflamed. Still an improvement on the previous deathstar logo
The old Lucent Technologies logo was a red circle painted in a zen style
April 12, 2025 at 9:03 PM
davidamuller.bsky.social
Well, tomorrow is going to be fun 🧪⚛️
NYT article on $1B funding at Cornell block by the Trump administration
April 9, 2025 at 3:29 AM
davidamuller.bsky.social
Live shot of the protests
“We have frozen all your electrons”
Angry crowds gather in protest on Heard Island, but they are all penguins
April 7, 2025 at 12:02 PM
davidamuller.bsky.social
Field theory - Cornell style

Look carefully for the spherical horse in the background. Foals due soon
A horse has put its nose over the fence in hope of a snack.
March 24, 2025 at 12:39 AM
davidamuller.bsky.social
Shared in the Nowruz celebrations with Iranian grad students and postdocs in Willard Straight last night. It will not be an easy year and they know it, but spring always comes
The haftseen table with the seven items to celebrate spring
March 17, 2025 at 7:14 PM
davidamuller.bsky.social
Americans are asking questions:
Google showing what questions people are asking, including “how many states are in Canada? 50 or 52?”
March 13, 2025 at 8:59 PM
davidamuller.bsky.social
And not the Gatan parallel EELS?
Two eels plushies with Gatan logos on their bodies side by side. These were very popular at microscopy meetings about 20 years ago
March 13, 2025 at 12:55 PM
davidamuller.bsky.social
Maybe also a user safety information bumper sticker for cyber trucks like the one Woody Guthrie had
Woody Guthrie and his guitar with the sticker “this machine kills fascists”
March 9, 2025 at 5:00 PM
davidamuller.bsky.social
after some renormalization
Screenshot for the horror movie "Sole Survivor"
February 21, 2025 at 9:49 AM
davidamuller.bsky.social
Thinking about this a lot lately
Given that Hitler had repeatedly vowed to use the democratic process in order to destroy democracy, why did the people committed to democracy let him do it? Many historians have jousted with this question, but perhaps the most piercing account remains an early one, written less than a decade after the war by the émigré German scholar Lewis Edinger, who had known the leaders of the Social Democrats well and consulted them directly— the ones who had survived, that is— for his study. His conclusion was that they simply "trusted that constitutional processes and the return of reason and fair play would assure the survival of the Weimar Republic and its chief supporters." The Social Democratic leadership had become a gerontocracy, out of touch with the generational changes beneath them. The top Social Democratic leaders were, on average, two decades older than their Nazi counterparts.
February 13, 2025 at 12:47 AM
davidamuller.bsky.social
Welcome to the better place, noted duckchographer @shellystem.bsky.social
Conference security catches a duck smuggler at bag check. The rather large rubber duck is rainbow tie died, and labeled “duck”
February 6, 2025 at 10:41 PM
davidamuller.bsky.social
I haven’t yet seen a snitch letter from NSF, but their web site has noticeable omissions. NIH has been blocked from reviewing grants
On Jan 18 the NSF job website had links to DEIA and Job openings. By Jan 23 both were gone
January 24, 2025 at 2:28 AM
davidamuller.bsky.social
My favorite phase diagram for this time of year is the Nakaya diagram. No fluffy snow flakes today!
#chemsky 🧪 ⚛️
Nakaya phase diagram for the shape of snow flakes as a function of temperature and moisture in the air. Big fluffy flakes from dendritic growth occur at high temperatures and saturations. Below -20C onlu plates and columns form - leady to crunchy snow
January 20, 2025 at 5:04 PM
davidamuller.bsky.social
Happy New Year’s Eve (whispered quietly for my hung-over Aussie friends)
Sunset on the beach at Aptos
January 1, 2025 at 3:33 AM
davidamuller.bsky.social
Still exponential
# of nature papers doubles every 7 years
December 18, 2024 at 7:08 PM
davidamuller.bsky.social
It may be winter in the old place, but welcome to less cloudy skies @pierrexthibault.bsky.social
Beebe lake behind the Cornell physics department. The leaves are down, but the sky is blue
December 6, 2024 at 11:04 PM
davidamuller.bsky.social
Updated for this years list - maybe NatureSpringer will have to merge with Elsevier to keep up with mdpi
December 3, 2024 at 1:31 PM