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Chris Jacobsen

Research Professor

PhD, SUNY Stony Brook, 1988

Chris Jacobsen is an Research Professor in Physics and Astronomy, and Applied Physics, at Northwestern. He was a Professor at Stony Brook University (1991-2010) and an Argonne Distinguished Fellow at Argonne National Lab (2010-2023). His research group is focused on developing new methods in x-ray microscopy, and applying them to interesting problems in biology, environmental science, and materials science. Using either diffractive optics (like Fresnel zone plates fabricated using electron beam lithography), or lens-less methods where iterative phase retrieval methods are used to reconstruct an image from a coherent diffraction pattern, images with a spatial resolution of 20 nm or better can be obtained. In absorption contrast, one can combine imaging with spectroscopy to study chemical speciation at the nanoscale, or one can use fluorescence detection to study trace element distributions with parts-per-billion sensitivity. His group is also interested in understanding the limitations that radiation damage presents to x-ray microscopy studies, and in developing both cryo-instrumentation and sample preparation methods to mitigate those limitations. Students in the group explore interesting problems in optical physics, in computation, and in instrumentation, and get to broaden their perspective by working with collaborators from other research fields like biology, environmental science, and materials science.

Awards and Honors

  • Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • Fellow, American Physical Society
  • Fellow, Optical Society of America
  • Presidential Faculty Fellow (White House/NSF), 1992
  • International Dennis Gabor Award (Hungary), 1996
  • Kurt Heinrich Award (Microbeam Analysis Society), 2001

Selected Publications

  • Chris Jacobsen, X-ray Microscopy (Cambridge University Press, 2020).  Hyperlink

  • Doğa Gürsoy, Yu-chen Karen Chen-Weigert, and Chris Jacobsen, "Lensless X-Ray Nanoimaging: Revolutions and opportunities," IEEE Signal Processing Magazine39, 44-54 (2022). Hyperlink

  • Ming Du, Zichao (Wendy) Di, Doğa Gürsoy, R. Patrick Xian, Yevgenia Kozorovitskiy, and Chris Jacobsen, "Upscaling x-ray nanoimaging to macroscopic specimens," Journal of Applied Crystallography54, 386-401 (2021). Hyperlink

  • Kenan Li, Sajid Ali, Michael Wojcik, Vincent De Andrade, Xiaojing Huang, Hanfei Yan, Yong S. Chu, Evgeny Nazaretski, Ajith Pattammattel, and Chris Jacobsen, "Tunable hard x-ray nanofocusing with Fresnel zone plates fabricated using deep etching," Optica7, 410-416 (2020). Hyperlink

  • Ming Du, Youssef S. G. Nashed, Saugat Kandel, Doğa Gürsoy, and Chris Jacobsen, "Three dimensions, two microscopes, one code: automatic differentiation for x-ray nanotomography beyond the depth of focus limit," Science Advances6, eaay3700 (2020). Hyperlink

  • Saugat Kandel, Siddharth Maddali, Marc Allain, Stephan O. Hruszkewycz, Chris Jacobsen, and Youssef S. G. Nashed, "Using automatic differentiation as a general framework for ptychographic reconstruction," Optics Express27, 18653-18672 (2019). Hyperlink

  • Junjing Deng, Yuan Hung Lo, Marcus Gallagher-Jones, Si Chen, Alan Pryor Jr., Qiaoling Jin, Young Pyo Hong, Youssef S. G. Nashed, Stefan Vogt, Jianwei Miao, and Chris Jacobsen, "Correlative 3D X-ray fluorescence and ptychographic tomography of frozen-hydrated green algae," Science Advances4, eaau4548 (2018). Hyperlink

  • Chris Jacobsen, "Relaxation of the Crowther criterion in multislice tomography," Optics Letters43, 4811-4814 (2018).  Hyperlink

    A more complete list is available on ORCID  or Publons