{"id":42347,"date":"2026-01-27T13:16:49","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T18:16:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/?p=42347"},"modified":"2026-01-27T13:17:59","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T18:17:59","slug":"meet-ufs-nicholas-rudawski-youtube-star-in-electron-microscopy-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/mse\/meet-ufs-nicholas-rudawski-youtube-star-in-electron-microscopy-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet UF\u2019s Nicholas Rudawski: YouTube star in electron microscopy education"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>UF engineer and\u00a0electron microscopy\u00a0expert\u00a0Nicholas\u00a0Rudawski\u00a0uses YouTube to help\u00a0others learn to\u00a0operate\u00a0electron microscopes and understand electron microscopy concepts and fundamentals.\u00a0\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>He\u00a0created\u00a0an open-access electron\u00a0microscopy-related YouTube\u00a0education channel with more than 5,700 subscribers and\u00a0hundreds of\u00a0thousands of views\u00a0worldwide.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>He champions\u00a0approachable\u00a0scientific\u00a0communication, which helps\u00a0students,\u00a0researchers\u00a0and industry professionals worldwide.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Nicholas&nbsp;Rudawski,&nbsp;Ph.D.,&nbsp;an&nbsp;electron microscopy&nbsp;expert at the University of Florida\u2019s&nbsp;Nanoscale Research Facility (NRF), is helping&nbsp;students and&nbsp;researchers from around the world&nbsp;use electron microscopes and&nbsp;understand electron microscopy,&nbsp;one video at a time.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rudawski, an associate engineer, earned his bachelor\u2019s degree in materials science and engineering from the University of Michigan in 2005 and his doctorate from UF in 2008.\u00a0He\u00a0joined the\u00a0NRF\u00a0as\u00a0faculty in 2012,\u00a0where he\u00a0oversees\u00a0training,\u00a0operations\u00a0and maintenance of\u00a0scanning\/transmission electron microscopes, known as\u00a0S\/TEMs.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In\u00a0the fall of 2018,\u00a0while teaching a graduate course\u00a0on electron microscopy,\u00a0his students expressed interest in seeing live demonstrations of instrument operation.\u00a0As\u00a0the S\/TEM\u00a0was located in\u00a0a specialized,\u00a0restricted\u00a0laboratory area,\u00a0he began recording short\u00a0iPhone\u00a0videos of himself using the equipment to give students a closer look at the process.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After much consideration, he&nbsp;concluded&nbsp;YouTube would be the fastest, most accessible&nbsp;way&nbsp;to share the videos.&nbsp;What started as a teaching aid soon attracted viewers far beyond his classroom, attracting&nbsp;people&nbsp;from&nbsp;around&nbsp;the world.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rudawski soon realized he was reaching a far larger audience than expected. By the&nbsp;fall of 2020, the number of subscribers&nbsp;to his&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@NicholasRudawski\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">channel<\/a>&nbsp;surpassed&nbsp;1,000. In&nbsp;early 2026, that number increased to over 5,700.&nbsp;On average, he gains about 1,000 subscribers each year.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cPeople found these videos,&nbsp;and it just took off from there. It was a snowball effect in the beginning,\u201d&nbsp;said Rudawski. \u201cI&nbsp;didn\u2019t&nbsp;realize&nbsp;there&nbsp;would be such a&nbsp;large&nbsp;audience for these&nbsp;videos.&nbsp;People often told me they&nbsp;relied&nbsp;heavily&nbsp;on my videos because&nbsp;they&nbsp;don\u2019t&nbsp;have people at their facilities&nbsp;to&nbsp;assist&nbsp;them or train them.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rudawski\u00a0has improved the\u00a0production\u00a0considerably since\u00a0the original iPhone videos\u00a0and\u00a0has embraced\u00a0social media in science education.\u00a0His\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=noE_F1o1XmA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">most popular<\/a>\u00a0video has more than 43,000 views; it shows him using an iPhone to record himself\u00a0operating\u00a0an FEI\u00a0Tecnai\u00a0F20 S\/TEM to perform basic TEM imaging. His goal is to present scientific information in an accessible way.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOnce I realized there was this audience,&nbsp;I just kept making videos,\u201d he said.&nbsp;\u201cI make it a priority to be welcoming to a wide range of&nbsp;viewers&nbsp;and&nbsp;particularly&nbsp;people who&nbsp;may&nbsp;have&nbsp;a&nbsp;more limited understanding&nbsp;of electron microscopy,\u201d he said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Feedback has&nbsp;been overwhelmingly positive.&nbsp;One YouTuber&nbsp;wrote:&nbsp;\u201cThis quality of scientific content on YouTube is rare. Excellent demonstration.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>His subscribers are constantly asking for&nbsp;new videos, too.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s no shortage of requests,\u201d he said. \u201cViewers&nbsp;are always asking me to&nbsp;make&nbsp;videos on different topics.&nbsp;With electron microscopy, there\u2019s so much&nbsp;possible&nbsp;content,&nbsp;it\u2019s&nbsp;basically limitless.&nbsp;I just go where it takes me and where people&nbsp;want me to go.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In his&nbsp;current&nbsp;position,&nbsp;he&nbsp;works closely with students,&nbsp;researchers&nbsp;and&nbsp;UF&nbsp;professors,&nbsp;as well as partners from industry,&nbsp;to use electron microscopy. They&nbsp;study and process&nbsp;a wide range of materials and specimens,&nbsp;including metals, ceramics, semiconductors, complex oxides, nanoparticles, electronic devices, two-dimensional&nbsp;materials&nbsp;and even&nbsp;some&nbsp;biological specimens.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He also serves as co-principal investigator&nbsp;with&nbsp;Professor&nbsp;Parag Banerjee, Ph.D.,&nbsp;from the University of Central Florida&nbsp;on a project&nbsp;to use advanced electron microscopy to study long-wave infrared transparent ceramics.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s very much an international audience;&nbsp;I&nbsp;usually&nbsp;receive two or three&nbsp;emails&nbsp;per&nbsp;week from people thanking me&nbsp;for my channel,\u201d said Rudawski. \u201cMy YouTube channel&nbsp;ultimately serves as&nbsp;an open forum&nbsp;for&nbsp;the exchange&nbsp;of&nbsp;electron microscopy-related information, which benefits the microscopy community.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>His&nbsp;growing online&nbsp;reach&nbsp;points to how UF research and teaching extend worldwide.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cNick\u2019s story is a great example of the impact of UF,\u201d said Michael Tonks, Ph.D., interim\u00a0chair of the Department of\u00a0Materials\u00a0Science\u00a0&amp;\u00a0Engineering. \u201cHe decided to take videos he was already making as part of his job and post them on YouTube, where everyone can\u00a0access them.\u00a0\u00a0He now has viewers from across the world who find his videos\u00a0very valuable.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>UF engineer and\u00a0electron microscopy\u00a0expert\u00a0Nicholas\u00a0Rudawski\u00a0uses YouTube to help\u00a0others learn to\u00a0operate\u00a0electron microscopes and understand electron microscopy concepts and fundamentals.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2592,"featured_media":42349,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-templates\/single-sidebar-none.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"featured_post":"off","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[21,57],"tags":[511],"class_list":["post-42347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mse","category-stories","tag-nicholas-rudawski"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2592"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42347"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42355,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42347\/revisions\/42355"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.ufl.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}