John Spence is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the Institute of physics, a recent co-editor of Acta Crystallographica and serves on the editorial board of Reports on Progress in Physics. He also serves on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Molecular Foundary and the Advanced Light Source at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. He is a member of the International Union of Crystallography's Commission on Electron Diffraction, and winner of the Burton award of the Microscopy Society of America.