Hanieh Jafarian successfully defended her PhD thesis on July 14, 2026, with supervisor Thomas Juffmann, chair Markus Arndt, and opponents Markus Valtiner (TU Vienna) and Marc-Georg Willinger (TU Munich).
Congratulations!

Hanieh will join the PNM group as a postdoc research fellow. We welcome her in the PNM team!

Her thesis was on the topic "High-resolution imaging of surface dynamics":

As part of the Optical Near-field Electron Microscopy (ONEM) consortium, Hanieh and her colleagues developed a novel microscopy platform that combines optical excitation with high-resolution electron imaging. In ONEM, light interacting with the sample generates optical near-field information that is converted into photoelectrons at a photocathode integrated into the sample substrate. These photoelectrons are then imaged using low-energy electron microscopy, providing access to nanoscale dynamics while avoiding direct electron-beam irradiation of the sample.

The team demonstrated a spatial resolution of 31 nm and a temporal resolution of 3 Hz. By further developing a liquid-cell platform for ONEM, they extended the technique to dynamic processes in liquid environments, enabling the imaging of live E. coli bacteria as well as the real-time observation of electrochemical copper deposition and dissolution.

The paper on arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.03597
The project website: https://www.onemicroscope.com/