Leonard Deepak Francis is the group leader in the Department of Advanced Electron Microscopy, Imaging and Spectroscopy at the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL). Leonard received his Ph.D. in 2005 from Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore, India. Subsequently, he was a postdoctoral fellow (2006–2008) at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. Leonard has published more than 80 papers including 5 review articles in major international journals. In addition he has a book chapter entitled “HRTEM and Catalysis” in the book “Advanced Electron Microscopy in Catalysis Research” (Pub: Academic Press, Ed. Peter Hawkes). Two of his articles have made it to the cover page of journals. He served as the guest editor for a special issue of the Journal of Nano Materials: Nanomaterial Properties: Size and Shape Dependencies. He has participated in two major European projects: NANOHVAC and NANoReg. In addition he is an acting referee for various ACS, RSC and Elsevier journals among others. More recently he has edited a book entitled “Advanced Transmission Electron Microscopy – Applications to Nanomaterials” published by Springer (2015). Leonard also holds 3 joint patents. His articles have been cited over 1000 times in total and has a h-index of 25.

His broad area of research is focused on the use of advanced electron microscopic techniques for the study of materials/nanomaterials for various applications, as well as in the study of fundamental physical phenomena and dynamics at the nanoscale. He also employs the Focused Ion Beam (FIB) technique extensively towards the investigations of nanodevices.