Dr. Gene E. Ice joined the former Metals & Ceramics Division in 1979. His early work on X-ray optics lead to the co-invention of dynamically-bent sagittal-focusing crystal optics, which are now deployed at synchrotron facilities around the world. After ten years of designing and then operating the ORNL materials science beamline at the National Synchrotron Light Source, Dr. Ice began research to develop polychromatic microdiffraction methods for materials characterization. This research ultimately led to construction of the world’s first dedicated polychromatic microdiffraction facility with submicron resolution in three dimensions. He became the X-ray Scattering and Microscopy Group Leader in 1995 and an ORNL Corporate Fellow in 2003. In 2008 he became an editor of the Journal of Synchrotron Radiation. He is considered an international expert on X-ray optics and Neutron optics with broad expertise in novel characterization methods to understand the fundamental relationship between structure and properties in materials.