Angus Kirkland


Angus Ian Kirkland Fellow of [the Institute of Physics|FInstP] FRSC FRMS HonFRMS is the JEOL Professor of Electron Microscopy at the Department of Materials, University of Oxford. Professor Kirkland specialises in High-resolution transmission electron microscopy and Scanning transmission electron microscopy.

Early life and education

Kirkland completed a Master of Arts in Natural Sciences, and a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge in 1989.

Research and career

Kirkland continued at Cavendish Laboratory as post-doctoral fellow until he became Senior Research Associate. He was later elected the Ramsay Memorial Trust Research Fellow.
He then moved to the Department of Materials, University of Oxford where he has led Oxford Electron Image Analysis Group since 2003. He was appointed as professor in 2005, and became the JEOL Professor of Electron Microscopy in 2011. He was the co-director of the University of Oxford’s David Cockayne Centre.
Kirkland research focuses on developing new quantitative techniques for ultra high-resolution electron microscopy, and new imaging detectors. His research also include developing analysis and simulation. He researches nanomaterials inorganic oxides structure and surfaces. The development of new detectors, e.g., Transmission Electron Aberration-Corrected Microscope. Angus Kirkland has an illustrious career with publications in Nature and Science. He led collaborations and grants valued in £million.
As of November 2022, he is the Science Director at the Rosalind Franklin Institute and the electron Physical Science Imaging Centre at Diamond Light Source. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of Ultramicroscopy.

Awards and honours

Kirkland is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the Royal Microscopical Society.. In 2025 he was elected to an honorary Fellowship of the Royal Microscopical Society.
Kirkland was awarded the Microscopy Society of America Award for the best paper published. In 2015, he was awarded the Harald Rose Distinguished Lecture Prize and in 2016 the Quadrennial Prize of the European Microscopy Society. He also received the RMS Alan Agar Medal in 2017.
In 2012, Kirkland was appointed as an Honorary Professor at the centre of HRTEM, Nelson Mandela University, South Africa.

Selected publications

  • Huilong Fei, Juncai Dong, Yexin Feng, Christopher S. Allen, Chengzhang Wan, Boris Volosskiy, Mufan Li, Zipeng Zhao, Yiliu Wang, Hongtao Sun, Pengfei An, Wenxing Chen, Zhiying Guo, Chain Lee, Dongliang Chen, Imran Shakir, Mingjie Liu, Tiandou Hu, Yadong Li, Angus I. Kirkland, Xiangfeng Duan, Yu Huang. . Nature Catalysis. 1 : 63–72. doi:10.1038/s41929-017-0008-y. ISSN 2520-1158.
  • Alex W. Robertson, Christopher S. Allen, Yimin A. Wu, Kuang He, Jaco Olivier, Jan Neethling, Angus I. Kirkland, Jamie H. Warner. . Nature Communications. 3 : 1144. doi:10.1038/ncomms2141. ISSN 2041-1723.
  • Lele Peng, Ziyang Wei, Chengzhang Wan, Jing Li, Zhuo Chen, Dan Zhu, Daniel Baumann, Haotian Liu, Christopher S. Allen, Xiang Xu, Angus I. Kirkland, Imran Shakir, Zeyad Almutairi, Sarah Tolbert, Bruce Dunn, Yu Huang, Philippe Sautet, Xiangfeng Duan. . Nature Catalysis. 3 : 762–770. doi:10.1038/s41929-020-0498-x. ISSN 2520-1158.
  • Meyer, Rüdiger R.; Sloan, Jeremy; Dunin-Borkowski, Rafal E.; Kirkland, Angus I.; Novotny, Miles C.; Bailey, Sam R.; Hutchison, John L.; Green, Malcolm L. H.. Science. 289 : 1324–1326. doi:10.1126/science.289.5483.1324. ISSN 0036-8075.
  • Warner, Jamie H.; Margine, Elena Roxana; Mukai, Masaki; Robertson, Alexander W.; Giustino, Feliciano; Kirkland, Angus I.. . Science. 337 : 209–212. doi:10.1126/science.1217529. ISSN 0036-8075.