SPECS-TII Inc.
email: jessica_hilton @ avs.org

JESSICA HILTON is the President and CEO of SPECS-TII Inc., the USA-based subsidiary of SPECS Surface Nano Analysis GmbH and the supplier of all SPECSGROUP and UNISOKU SPM surface analysis instrumentation in North America.  Jessica received her B.S. in Engineering Science from Trinity University and her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota.  Her graduate work focused on materials growth and characterization in UHV for spintronics applications, with specific interest on the interfaces between manganese-based metals and compound semiconductors grown by molecular beam epitaxy and in-situ characterization by scanning probe microscopy and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.  

Jessica worked at Omicron NanoTechnology as a Technical Sales Engineer and Territory Sales Manager (2006-2013), at Mantis Deposition as North American Sales and Marketing Manager (2013-2017), and at RHK Technology as Director of Worldwide Sales and Marketing (2017-2019) before joining SPECS-TII Inc. in 2019.  All of these positions have enabled her to remain involved with science and the research community by working with and maintaining close ties to customers and colleagues focusing on various aspects of research, surface analysis, and deposition.  

Jessica has been a part of the AVS for over 20 years, since she first began attending local meetings and the annual symposium as a graduate student.  During that time, she won local AVS poster awards, a Graduate Research Award (2004), the Magnetic Interfaces & Nanostructures Division Leo M. Falicov Student Award (2005), and the Nellie Yeoh Whetten Award (2006).  Since then, Jessica was heavily involved in the AVS Electronic Materials and Photonics Division (EMPD) in various leadership and chair positions over the years (2012-2021) and served on the AVS Board of Directors from 2022-2023.  She is also currently the Chair of the AVS Professional Leadership Committee (PLC) (2021-present), which focuses on providing career development and leadership resources to members of the AVS community.  

Outside of the AVS, Jessica is on the Program Committee of the Conference on the Physics & Chemistry of Surfaces & Interfaces (PCSI), whose focus on fundamental understandings of surfaces and interfaces is extremely complementary to the AVS membership and subject matter, and is a member of the SVC Foundation Board of Directors, which supports scientific scholarship, charitable, and educational activities.