Matt Whitaker is a Research Associate Professor in the Mineral Physics Institute and Department of Geosciences at Stony Brook University. He is a Partner User Beamline Scientist for the high pressure Multi-Anvil program at the XPD beamline at NSLS-II (MAXPD), and he also currently serves as a high pressure Beamline Scientist for beamline 6-BM-B at the APS. Matt is the PI and Facility Director of the Synchrotron Earth and Environmental Science (SEES) Stony Brook Multi-Anvil X-ray (SBMAX) Program, which supports the two aforementioned beamlines.
Prior to these current appointments, Matt was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Ehime University in Matsuyama, Japan, and then served as High Pressure Beamline Scientist for X17B2 at NSLS-I from 2011 until its closure in 2014. He has been an active synchrotron user for over twenty years at twenty different beamlines at five different synchrotron facilities on three continents. Presently, he is an active user at the HEX, PDF, SRX, TES, XFM, and XPD beamlines at NSLS-II and has served on the NSLS-II UEC starting in 2019. During this time, he co-created and continues to host the wildly popular NSLS-II UEC Show and has worked to increase UEC involvement both at NSLS-II and across the DOE Light Sources.
Matt's interests lie in adapting synchrotron techniques to study everything from high pressure minerals and materials science to meteorites and planetary analogs. He is very interested in pursuing multi-modal studies of materials using multiple techniques available at multiple beamlines, particularly at NSLS-II.
Selected Publications
Noda, M., Gwanmesia, G.D., Whitaker, M.L., Chen, H, Inoue, T., Sakamoto, N., and Yurimoto, H. (2026) Elasticity of β-Mg2SiO4 Containing 1.2 wt% H2O to 10 GPa and 600 K by Ultrasonic Interferometry with Synchrotron X-radiation. American Mineralogist, 111(1), 128-137. DOI 10.2138/am-2024-9664
Riesel, E.A., Fang, Z., Fabini, D.H., Altman, A.B., Meng, Y., Ghose, S.K., Whitaker, M.L., Park, C., Rappe, A.M., and Freedman, D.E. (2025) Planar Defect Layers Template a High-Pressure InBi Polymorph. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 147 (30), 26496-26505. DOI 10.1021/jacs.5c06253
Marshall, P.V., Thiel, S.D., Cote, E.E., Arigbede, J., Whitaker, M.L., and Walsh, J.P.S. (2024) High-Pressure Synthesis and Recovery of Single Crystals of the Metastable Manganese Carbide, MnCx. Chemistry – A European Journal, 30 (42) e202401581. DOI: 10.1002/chem.202401581
Hunt, S.A., Walker, A.M., Lord, OT., Stackhouse, S., Schardong, L., Armstrong, L.S., Parsons, A.J., Lloyd, G.E., Wheeler, J., Fenech, D.M., Michalik, S., and Whitaker, M.L. (2024) Experimental Observation of a New Attenuation Mechanism in hcp-Metals That May Operate in the Earth's Inner Core. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 25 (6) e2023GC011386. DOI: 10.1029/2023GC011386
Pagan, D.C., Kissell, L.A. & Whitaker, M.L. (2024) An In Situ Study of the Role of Pressure on Fe Recrystallization and Grain Growth During Thermomechanical Processing. Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A, 55(2) 368-374. DOI: 10.1007/s11661-023-07277-5
Marshall, P.V., Thiel, S.D., Cote, E.E., Hrubiak, R., Whitaker, M.L., Meng, Y., and Walsh, J.P.S. (2024) Combined First-Principles and Experimental Investigation into the Reactivity of Codeposited Chromium–Carbon under Pressure. ACS Materials Au. 2024, 4, 393-402. DOI: 10.1021/acsmaterialsau.3c00086
Laasch, R., Liu, Z., Ma, L., Nicholas, S., Northrup, P., Thieme, J., Whitaker, M.L. (2023) From Outer Space to the Center of the Earth: How NSLS-II Capabilities Enable Geoscience Studies. Synchrotron Radiation News 35 (6) 2-7. DOI: 10.1080/08940886.2022.2156752