Frances M. Ross is based at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center, where she has built a program around a microscope with deposition and focused ion beam capabilities, and developed closed liquid cell microscopy to image electrochemical processes. Previously she worked at the National Center for Electron Microscopy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and has also been a Visiting Scientist at Lunds Universitet, Sweden and an Adjunct Professor at Arizona State University. She received the UK Institute of Physics Boys Medal, the MRS Outstanding Young Investigator Award and the MSA Burton Medal, holds an Honorary Doctorate from Lunds Universitet, and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Materials Research Society, the Microscopy Society of America and the American Vacuum Society.