RASEI Fellow Steven Spurgeon Named a 2026 American Physical Society Fellow

Daniel Morton — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 21:14:22 +0000

RASEI Fellow Steven Spurgeon Named a 2026 American Physical Society Fellow Daniel Morton Tue, 10/20/2026 - 15:14

Daniel Morton

RASEI Fellow Steven Spurgeon has been named a 2026 Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), nominated through the Society's Topical Group on Data Science.

APS Fellowship is one of the most respected honors in the physical sciences. It reflects the recognition of one's scientific peers, and each year's new cohort is limited to no more than one-half of one percent of the Society's membership.

Spurgeon was recognized ‘for pioneering the integration of autonomous microscopy and advanced data science to reveal fundamental physical mechanisms in complex oxides, interfaces, and radiation environments — bridging experiment and theory to forge a new paradigm for AI-accelerated materials discovery’

Spurgeon is a Senior Materials Data Scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR), where his research centers on autonomous experimentation and AI-driven materials characterization. He also holds a joint faculty appointment in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, where he leads the TIME (Transformative Intelligence for Materials Exploration) Research Group. In Spurgeon's own words, the goal of his work is "accelerating the discovery of new materials by teaching scientific instruments how to think."

Spurgeon was applying AI and machine learning to materials data well before the current AI wave. Having spent years analyzing large sets of microscopy images to identify patterns and defects, he began asking whether computers could be trained to do that work. That question set him on a path that now spans a wide array of applications.

That early start has produced a substantial body of work: more than 90 publications, seven software packages, and two licensed technologies. In 2024, Spurgeon and his collaborators won an R&D 100 Award for the Autonomous Electron Microscope (AutoEM), developed with instrument manufacturer JEOL while he was at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). AutoEM is an AI-embedded microscope that helps guide experiments as they happen. At NLR, he is now extending this work through AM³, a platform for agentic, autonomous electron microscopy. In 2025, the Microscopy Society of America awarded him its Burton Medal. This year, his alma mater Drexel University named him to its 40 Under 40 list.

Spurgeon's research harnesses AI to understand and control how structure-property relationships emerge in functional materials, with applications in power electronics and microelectronics, energy storage, and quantum systems. His work at NLR and Mines spans autonomous experimentation across materials processing and characterization, data-driven electron microscopy, and atomistic modeling. Cutting-edge instrumentation now enables high-throughput experiments that rapidly generate multimodal data. That speed is of limited value, however, if researchers can't analyze the results and understand what they mean. That's where machine learning comes in: instruments trained to classify results and act on the data in real time. This approach helps researchers keep pace with high-throughput experimentation and more effectively steer autonomous materials design and synthesis.

Recognition from a physics society's data science group shows how central AI and data-driven methods have become across scientific disciplines. It also echoes the founding mission of APS, established in 1899 "to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics" by connecting U.S. scientists to a growing international research community. Spurgeon's work shares that spirit: it is deeply collaborative, spanning national laboratories, universities, and industry partners.

Congratulations to Steven Spurgeon on this well-deserved recognition of the pioneering work he and his team are doing in data-driven, autonomous materials design.

OCTOBER 2026

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PowerUp 2026 Conference

Daniel Morton — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 22:50:12 +0000

PowerUp 2026 Conference Daniel Morton Thu, 10/01/2026 - 16:50

Daniel Morton

The first PowerUp Conference was held in Boulder, CO, with support from RASEI in the SEEC building on the �鶹��ý East Campus.

PowerUp is a new research conference focused on the future of electric power systems and the technologies that support them. More than 200 attendees came together to participate in a series of seminars, workshops, poster sessions, and social networking events. RASEI Fellow Kyri Baker is a member of the Conference Leadership and was the key local organizer for this year’s event.

During the three-day event the attendees explored and exchanged ideas across a broad range of topics, including grid planning and optimization, renewable energy integration, energy storage systems, AI & Machine Learning in Power Systems and many more.

The organizers were very intentional about the conference process, with all papers being reviewed in a double-blind manner, and employing a transparent review process. The full proceedings and reviews from the conference can be found here.

The program was intentionally designed as a single-track event, designed to maintain participants focus on the high-quality content and encourage interaction among the participants. The event wrapped up with a debrief and feedback session, asking the participants about what worked well, and what didn’t, that will setup the organizers well for the 2028 event that will be hosted at the University of Michigan.

A selection of participants from the PowerUp 2026 Conference

SEPTEMBER 2026

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RASEI Fellow Steven Spurgeon Named a 2026 American Physical Society Fellow

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