Congratulations to our TEM Lab Manager, Chris Winkler, for winning the NC State Pride of the Wolfpack Award!
Chris Winkler is a lab manager and a top electron microscopist who has been working as the TEM lab manager at AIF since May 2019. Like many hard-working staff members at AIF, Chris’ duties include the maintenance of the sophisticated and expensive instrument, training and educating students on research techniques, and promoting research collaboration with industry partners. These are the core values of our pack as well as the entire academic society of this country.
What is most impressive about Chris is his work during the pandemic since early 2020, which significantly helped promote research excellence, community well-being, and active collaboration in the most difficult time in recent years.
Chris is creative and willing to go above and beyond for training. He wrote hundreds of pages of operation instructions and hosted multiple remote training webinars so students and new users could still learn techniques and later perform independent experiments on the TEMs. This is unique compared to university facilities and national labs and is highly valuable to the well-being of the research community. The next generation of scientists and engineers were able to continue to learn and practice while most other research facilities were idle.
His flexibility and patience with students are remarkable. Every student simply loves working with him….I think that he manages the TEMs with a lot of dedication and professionalism.
Prof. Djamel Kaomi, North Carolina State University
Chris is an outstanding researcher. With his expertise and knowledge built upon extensive research experience, he has been actively working with AIF partners on collaborative works, and is involved in the design and preparation of the laboratory projects in TEM courses.
Please join us in congratulating Chris for winning this award!
