Meet Our Team

Barbara Foster, Founder
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Areas of Specialization: Light microscopy (including Polarized Light and Fluorescence), microspectroscopy, microinterferometry, Image analysis.

Barbara was bitten by the microscopy bug over 30 years ago. Since then, she has worked with professional societies (in the early 80’s she even founded her own, The Northeastern Association of Microscopists), manufacturers (including Cambridge/Reichert-Jung, Zeiss, and Sarastro), consulting companies, and, most importantly, thousands of end users. For over 25 years she served as course organizer and a principal lecturer for the American Chemical Society program, “Applied Optical Microscopy.” Her many years of experience combining basic principles with direct application can help you to become more productive immediately.

Ms. Foster also writes extensively for the microscopy community. She is American Lab’s Consulting Editor on Microscopy a frequent contributor to BioPhotonics, Advanced Materials & Processes, R&D or Microscopy Today. Visit our Library for a collection of her articles and references to her book and other major chapters.

Dr. Mary Carrabba, Master Spectroscopist & co-founder, MicroSpec On-Site
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Areas of Specialization: UV-Vis, NIR, FTIR, Raman

Mary is our spectroscopy maven.  Her focus for the past 25 years, has been how molecular spectroscopy is applied in forensic science and industrial problem solving.  She got her first taste of microspectroscopy during graduate school where her research, conducted at the FBI Academy, culminated in the addition of infrared microscopy to FBI Laboratory fiber examinations.  She subsequently joined the Laboratory, where as a chemist she specialized in the infrared analysis of trace evidence and had the opportunity to provide technical support in many major cases such as the first World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings, O.J. Simpson murder case, and the Unabomber investigation.

Subsequently, Dr. Carrabba joined HP as a failure analysis engineer, specializing in the application of infrared, Raman, and UV/visible microspectroscopy to manufacturing and R&D problems, then moved on to Southern Oregon University, teaching analytical and forensic chemistry.  In 2006, she established Rogue Spectroscopy, LLC, a company that provides scientific expertise, education, training, and lab/research resources for chemical and materials analysis.  Along the way, Mary has trained hundreds of scientists and students in spectroscopic techniques and authored many papers and book chapters on forensic applications of infrared microscopy.

Jerry Sedgewick, Confocal & Image Analysis/Image Processing maven
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Areas of Specialization: Confocal Microscopy, Image Analysis and Image Processing training, applications development and analytical services

Jerry is our confocal and imaging/analysis expert. His focus has been in microscopy and post-processing training, computer aided image analysis to show medical device efficacy, color calibration, image forensics and lighting solutions for instrumentation. He has solved problems for Medtronic, St. Jude Medical, Afton Chemical and numerous start-up companies. Much of his practical experience in imaging and microscopy challenges developed when he ran the core microscopy facility at the University of Minnesota.

Early in his career, Jerry was among the pioneers in moving science from film-based imaging to digital. He has authored two books and numerous book chapters on digital imaging. Since then he has custom built a video-rate, multiphoton microscope system; created an image analysis method to detect diabetic retinopathy in retinal images; acted as technical adviser for the world’s first color calibration slide in brightfield microscopy; provided quantitative services that resulted in FDA approvals for three start-ups, among other projects. Along the way he has authored and co-authored numerous papers in juried and non-juried publications, and created several training videos at his YouTube site.

Dr. Lou Ross
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Areas of Specialization: SEM, EDS

Bill Miller, System Integration Wizard
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Areas of Specialization: Cameras, Boards, Illumination, & System Integration

Dr. Donald Chernoff,  AFM/SPM guru
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Areas of Specialization: AFM, SPM

Don is our Scanning Probe guru. Originally with Veeco, he was one of the inventors of the widely used tapping mode. Don Chernoff was educated at the University of Chicago (B.S. Chemistry 1973, Ph.D. Physical Chemistry 1978). He has more than 30 years of industrial research and engineering experience, including 8 years at Standard Oil (Ohio), now BP, and 2 years at Boehringer Mannheim, now Roche Diagnostics. In 1990, he founded Advanced Surface Microscopy, Inc., an independent analytical research and testing laboratory. Areas of Specialty: AFM and STM training and applications development; AFM and STM analytical services.