Bede Pittenger is a Senior Staff Development Scientist in the AFM Unit of Bruker's Nano Surfaces Business. He received his PhD in Physics from the University of Washington (Seattle, WA) in 2000, but has worked with scanning probe microscopes for 25 years, building systems, developing techniques, and studying properties of materials at the nanoscale. His work includes more than thirty publications and four patents on various techniques and applications of scanning probe microscopy. Dr. Pittenger's interests span topics from interfacial melting of ice, to mechanobiology of cells and tissues, to the nanomechanics of polymers and composites.