R. J. Dwayne Miller

R. J. Dwayne Miller is a Canadian chemist and a professor at the University of Toronto. His focus is in physical chemistry and biophysics. He is most widely known for his work in ultrafast laser science, time-resolved spectroscopy, and the development of new femtosecond electron sources that facilitates ultrafast electron diffraction experiments. His research has enabled real-time observation of atomic motions in materials during chemical processes and has shed light on the structure-function correlation that underlies biology.

Early life and education

Miller was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In 1978, he received a B.Sc. in chemistry and immunology at the University of Manitoba where Bryan R. Henry was his advisor. He completed his Ph.D. in chemistry at Stanford University in 1983 under the supervision of Michael D. Fayer. His thesis work focused on energy transport in model systems of photosynthesis and is titled Part I, Electronic excited state transport and trapping in disordered systems; Part II, Laser induced ultrasonics.

Academic career

Following graduation, Miller gained a faculty position at the University of Rochester and immediately took a 12-month leave to do postdoctoral research in solid state physics as a NATO science fellow at the Laboratoire de Spectrometrie Physique (renamed to Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire de Physique in 2011 ) at the Université Joseph Fourier in Grenoble, France under the direction of Hans Peter Trommsdorff and Robert Romenstain. He returned to University of Rochester in 1984 as an assistant professor of chemistry. He was promoted to associate professor in 1988 and then full professor of chemistry and optics in 1992. In 1995, he moved back to Canada and relocated his research group to the departments of chemistry and physics at the University of Toronto. In 2006, he was appointed as a University Professor and later as a Distinguished Faculty Research Chair.

From 2010-2014, R. J. D. Miller was the director of the Max Planck Group, Centre for Free Electron Laser Science/DESY, University of Hamburg. From 2014-2020, he was the co-founding director of Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in Hamburg, Germany.

In 2023, he was inducted as a fellow of the Royal Society and has been a fellow of Royal Society of Canada and the Royal Society of Chemistry since 1999 and 2016, respectively. He is also a member of the Chemical Institute of Canada, Canadian Association of Physicists, American Physical Society, and Optical Society of America.

Science outreach

Beyond his scientific work, Miller is dedicated to the promotion of science education through outreach to school children. He founded and is a board member of Science Rendezvous, an annual science festival that aims to expose general public to science and technology.