Dr. Jens Rafaelsen, Applications Engineer, EDAX

While I haven’t been around in the microscopy and microanalysis world in a professional sense for too long, it’s hard not to notice how often the faces stay the same but the title on the name tag or the company logo changes. Just to name a few from the EDAX side, Patrick Camus (Director of Engineering) used to work in applications for Noran, John Haritos (Southwest Region Sales Manager) came from Oxford, Sophie Yan (Applications) came from Zeiss, and Dave Durham (Western Region Sales Manager) came from Bruker.

Though microanalysis is a big field, it’s a small world once you get into the commercial side of it. I guess it shows that there are not too many of us that really have the deep level of interest and dedication to stay in field and the ones that do are often in short supply. While some of the changes could be a case of the grass being greener on the other side, it often seems to be driven by the desire for a career step or for personal reasons. The interesting part is that I have very rarely seen anyone hold a grudge or perceive a move to another company in the field as something negative.

Every year it seems like a couple of the old faces retire (though they often still show up at M&M, often wearing their last company shirt), but you start to recognize the rest of them despite any changes in affiliation. This makes it a little easier to identify the new faces and with that, I would like to introduce the newest one at EDAX: Shangshang Mu (pronounced Shong-shong) recently joined us as an applications engineer and will be based in our Draper, Utah office. He holds a PhD in Earth Sciences from Boston University and was most recently lab manager at Southeastern North Carolina Regional Microanalytical and Imaging Consortium. At EDAX, we are excited to have him on board and look forward to the rest of you getting to know him.