At the beginning of September, staff and users of the world’s largest X-ray laser facility celebrate a successful first year of user operation.
Since September 2017, over 500 scientists from more than 20 countries from across the globe have visited European XFEL in Schenefeld in north Germany for their week long experiments. The first research results were published just days ago on 28 August; more publications are in preparation for the following weeks.
For the first and second round of experiments scheduled from September 2017 to October 2018, 123 international groups of scientists submitted their proposals for experiment. Of these, 26 groups were selected by an international panel of experts to carry out their research at the two instruments—the SPB/SFX instrument (Single Particles, Clusters and Biomolecules / Serial Femtosecond Crystallography) and the FXE instrument (Femtosecond X-Ray Experiments). The experiments range from method development to biomolecule structure determination and studies of extremely fast processes in small molecules and chemical reactions. Submissions for the user experiments at the remaining four instruments scheduled to start operation between the end of 2018 and mid-2019 are currently being evaluated.
>Read more on the European XFEL website
Image: The European XFEL birthday cake shows the map of the underground tunnel system. It was cut by Nicole Elleuche (Administrative Director European XFEL), Robert Feidenhans’l (Managing Director European XFEL), as well as Maria Faury (Chair of the European XFEL Council) and distributed to European XFEL and DESY staff.