Part Of The Team

George Hollyer
Dept. of Materials Science & Engineering, University of Pennsylvania
NRT Soft AE Trainees
Published March 16, 2026

One of the best parts of a PhD is doing a first of a kind experiment that pushes boundaries. In my case, a boundary of silicon nitride one thousandth the thickness of a hair holding back 20 atmospheres of heated gas from the vacuum of an electron microscope. It was sometimes nerve-racking to pipe pressurized flammable gases into a multimillion-dollar precision instrument, but this is the kind of new capability the national lab system is there to incubate. My experimental campaign was safe and successful thanks to the expertise of the staff at Brookhaven National Lab (BNL). Everywhere at the lab you’ll hear people talk about “science as a team sport.” For 6months I was lucky enough to be part of the team, badging in with the thousands of scientists and techs that make BNL hum.

The first thing that strikes you once you’re waived past the guard booth is how you’re still a 5-minute drive from your destination. It’s less a facility and more a town¹ with 300 buildings over 8 square miles and its own post office. I split my time therebetween the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) and the Chemistry Division. I was quickly busy with projects and collaborators from all these facilities.

I was at BNL under the Office of Science Graduate Student Research Internship (SCGSR) program. Unlike most internship programs, you aren’t assigned a project. Your thesis research is your project, and nearly every resource and expert you could need is just a couple minutes’ walk away. My host scientist Anatoly Frenkel and his group gave me an invaluable home base and helped me get up to speed quickly once on site.

For my high-pressure microscopy project, the environmental transmission electron microscope (ETEM) at CFN was the perfect match for the technique I was developing. At the core was a chemical reactor smaller than my pinky nail with windows thin enough for electrons traveling near the speed of light to pass through. Inside it, a hot mixture of hydrogen and carbon dioxide at twenty atmospheres of pressure would cause metal nanoparticles to move on the surface of a ceramic support. The electrons illuminated the sample and showed the nanoscale motion of the particles as though they were shadow puppets lit by a flashlight. The usually unobservable changes in the shape and size of catalyst particles were plainly visible, helping researchers in the Chemistry Division understand how oxidation and dealloying played a role in the catalyst system we were studying.

Besides this project, I also saw “team science” in action during several beamline experiments at NSLS-II with Anatoly’s group. We worked in shifts around the clock to make every minute on in-situ x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) beamlines count. We examined how platinum atoms coalesced and then redispersed on ceramic surfaces by measuring their oxidation state and local bonding environment. From them, I picked up new skills like x-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) fitting that complement my work in microscopy. With so many opportunities, the six months I spent there passed quickly. I left with new skills, new friends and a greater appreciation of what that national lab system could offer. With the support and flexibility to work on difficult new experiments, they were the most productive months of my PhD so far.

Thankfully, there are plenty of opportunities to return through the user proposal system. You don’t have to work at Brookhaven to make use of its facilities. Any scientist or grad student can access their facilities at no cost as long as they can articulate and justify what they want to do in a short proposal. Staff scientists are happy to consult on proposals and support new experiments once on site. They take pride in enabling ambitious and impactful research. This is “team sport” spirit that the national lab system is built on.

Though I am back in Philadelphia and moving onto other projects, the time at BNL was incredibly helpful for my thesis work and development as a scientist. I look forward to returning to BNL as a user to and to catch up with the friends I made there.

________________

¹ Upton, NY 11973 to be exact