Dr. Maxwell Terban

COO & Co-founder

I'm a materials scientist who specializes in understanding structure at the atomic and nanoscale—particularly for materials that don't fit neatly into traditional crystallography. Over the past decade doing research at Columbia University and the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, I've focused on developing advanced X-ray scattering techniques using pair distribution function (PDF) analysis to characterize everything from amorphous polymers to nanostructured catalysts. This work reveals how synthesis conditions and processing affect structure, which directly impacts material performance. My approaches combine PDF with more traditional techniques like powder X-ray diffraction and SAXS to build a complete picture of materials structure and morphology for applications in structure determination, phase quantification, and understanding of formation mechanisms. I have worked with hundreds of scientists across a wide range of disciplines including pharmaceuticals, polymers, catalysts, battery materials, and nanomaterials, applying whichever methods are best suited to the problem.