Rick Ubic is a professor of materials science and engineering at Boise State University.  His background is mainly in materials characterization, especially by electron microscopy and x-ray/neutron diffraction. His research interests are broadly in the field of structure-property relationships in functional materials. He earned his bachelor's degree in materials science in 1993 and his master's degree in 1994, both from Case Western Reserve University. He obtained his PhD in Materials from the University of Sheffield in 1998. After a two-year postdoctoral position in Sheffield, he joined the faculty of the Department of Materials at Queen Mary, University of London in 1999. There he became the faculty member responsible for the departmental electron microscopy unit. In 2007 he was recruited by Boise State University to establish and manage a new TEM lab. He currently teaches courses on structural characterization, crystallography, and ceramic processing. He has received severalawards, including the American Ceramic Society's 2003 Edward C. Henry Best Paper Award and their 2004 Robert L. Coble Award for Young Scholars for his "contributions relating crystallography to the behavior of dielectric properties in complex compounds." In 2017, he was awarded Boise State University’s highest honour for research, the Foundation Scholar Award. He has been invited to present various aspects of his research at international forums in 11 countries on four continents. Prof. Ubic is a member of the Institute of Physics (Electron Microscopy and Analysis Group) and a fellow of the American Ceramic Society, where he has served on the Publications Committee and as chair of the Electronics Division as well as the Spriggs Phase Equilibria Award Subcommittee. He is also editor-in-chief of Materials Research Bulletin, published by Elsevier.

• Introduction.- Crystals.- Diffraction.- Defects.- Amorphous states.- Bonding.