In this episode of the Conversations on AFM podcast series, we speak to Prof. Mervyn Miles, a pioneer in the field of AFM. Prof. Miles talks about the technology, placing it in a historical context, from the early beginnings to Dr. Toshio Ando’s groundbreaking work on the development of high-speed AFM. He speaks on trends and applications, from the importance of automation, high-speed data acquisition, and AI machine learning to future applications in biomedical science.