John C. H. Spence teaches at Arizona State University, with research and teaching in condensed matter physics, electron microscopy and biophysics. He is currently Snell Professor and Director of Science for the National Science Foundation's eight-campus "BioXFEL" consortium. This is devoted to the use of the recently invented x-ray laser in biology, providing movies of molecular machines at work with femtosecond time resolution. John is the author of texts on electron microscopy. He is also a keen musician, pilot and sailor.