Inspired by our #LightSourceSelfies video campaign (featured here on our website) we invited everyone with a passion for light source science to join our #LightSourceSelfiesDay on Monday 20th May 2024. This special day succeeded in lighting up social media with images that showed the wide range of places, people, technology, and world-changing science that makes up our amazing community.
Huge thanks to all those who participated. We look forward to repeating this activity in 2025. In the meantime, keep sharing your selfies and tagging us at #Happy20Lightsources and #LightSourceSelfiesDay2024.
Excitement is building at Lightsources.org HQ as we prepare to see your #LightSourceSelfiesDay posts on, or around, the 20th May 2024. Whatever your connection to light sources, we invite you to join us in celebrating all that has been achieved in the past 20 years and the exciting, world changing, science that is on the horizon in the future. Let’s light up social media with images from around our international community! #LightSourceSelfiesDay2024 #Happy20Lightsources
A common feature of all light sources is that they attract staff from a global community of scientists, engineers, computer scientists, project managers, administrators, science communicators, STEM students etc.
As you walk around synchrotron and free electron laser facilities you will hear many different languages being spoken. International customs and cuisines are discussed alongside the intricacies of the machine and the wide variety of scientific experiments.
Here, we present an international greeting as we start celebrations to mark the 20th Anniversary of Lightsources.org. If you are interested in job offers at synchrotrons and free electron lasers, check out our careers section. It’s updated on a daily basis! Careers at light sources around the world – https://lightsources.org/careers/
Light sources take on a different atmosphere during the night. Researchers develop their own strategies for surviving experiments that require them to be on a beamline when they would normally be fast asleep! We round off 2023 by sharing top tips from scientists from the Swiss Light Source, LCLS, Diamond and NSLS-II.
Maël Clémence is a PhD student at the Swiss X-ray Free-Electron Laser (SwissFEL), which is located at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) in Villigen, Switzerland. His #LightSourceSelfie journey starts in the forest on top of the facility where he explains that the SwissFEL was designed to be fully integrated with the natural environment. Maël then uses a popular mode of transport to travel to the facility entrance. He recalls his childhood fascination with light, what led him to fall in love with physics, and his path to the SwissFEL.
For his PhD studies, Maël is utilising the machine’s ultraintense, ultrashort X-ray pulses to study and investigate quantum properties of magnetic materials in extreme conditions. Being at the SwissFEL has enabled Maël to gain a deeper understanding of this beautiful machine and the huge amount of skill and dedication that is required by the teams responsible for building and maintaining it.
The word ‘teamwork’ best describes his job as, on good days and bad, everyone pulls together and supports each other.
You’ll discover one of Maël’s favourite free time activities at the close out of his #LightSourceSelfie. Happy viewing!
To celebrate International Day of Light 2023, we bring you a #LightSourceSelfies special (see below) from Ludmila Leroy, a postdoc at the Swiss Light Source (SLS), which is located at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) in Villigen, Switzerland. With an energy of 2.4 GeV, the SLS provides photon beams of high brightness for research in materials science, biology and chemistry.
Ludmila, who is from Brazil, is studying the properties of magnetic materials. She highlights the versatility of light sources as hugely advantageous to science and learning from, and about, nature. “We are all driven by curiosity and these versatile facilities gives us the ability to try different approaches and push the boundaries in our experiments.” Looking back on her career to date, Ludmila would advise her younger self “not to be scared to reach out for the world” as there are many light sources facilities around the globe and travelling to different countries is an exciting part of being a scientist.
As with all light sources, the SLS operates around the clock and Ludmila has a new take on making night shifts more bearable. Throughout the #LightSourceSelfie campaign, most participants have mentioned coffee, chocolate or candy when talking about night shift survival strategies. For Ludmila, night shifts are more bearable when she eats healthily and makes sure that she keeps hydrated.
And when she is not at a light source….Ludmila is in charge of the Music Club at PSI, which brings together a mixture of PhD students, postdocs, technicians and staff scientists. The PSIchedelics is just one of the society’s musical entertainment offerings. Ludmila plays the bass and sings in this band and her #LightSourceSelfie ends with a fantastic clip of them in action. You can find out more about music at PSI here: Music at PSI | Our Research | Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI)
Our #LightSourceSelfies Finale features many of the campaign’s amazing participants pondering on the answer to the question ‘What one word best describes your work?’ We feel this short video says a lot about the wonderful people that choose a light source related career. World changing science is happening at synchrotrons and Free Electron Lasers around the globe and the diversity and collaboration that exists between people from a wide range of disciplines is something that Lightsources.org feel is really worth celebrating. We hope you agree! Thank you for following our campaign and watch this space for new content as we prepare to celebrate 75 Years of Science with Synchrotron Light. #My1stLight will be our next campaign and we’ll once again be asking light source staff and users from the 30 facilities that are part of Lightsources.org to share their stories with us. If you’d like to get involved, please do e-mail us here webmaster
The theme for International Women’s Day, 8 March, 2022 (IWD 2022) is, “Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow”, recognizing the contribution of women and girls around the world, who are leading the charge on climate change adaptation, mitigation, and response, to build a more sustainable future for all.
To mark the day and the theme, Lightsources.org brings you a special #LightSourceSelfie montage featuring just a few of the dedicated women who feature in our video campaign.
For our final Monday Montage, we focus on the benefits of perseverance and our ability as humans to dig deep and remain determined even when things are going wrong. Maximilian Obst, one of the FELBE (HZDR) users, and Michele Manfredda, from FERMI at Elettra, give honest and insightful accounts of their light source experimental experiences. Light sources are complex scientific tools. They are challenging to build, optimise and utilise. But by continuing to overcome obstacles and working as a team, great and unexpected results can appear. Often these results are obtained in the middle of the night or towards the end of a very long shift on the beamline. However, the lucky few who observe them realise they are the first people in the world to have gleaned this knowledge. Perseverance pays off!
As our #LightSourceSelfies campaign nears completion, we visit Germany and the Radiation Source ELBE, which is the largest and most versatile research instrument of the HZDR. The electron beam of the superconducting linear accelerator delivers different kinds of secondary radiation for various research purposes from materials science up to medicine. Michael Klopf began his light source career in the USA and is now one of ELBE’s Free Electron Laser (FEL) Beamline Scientists. He explains his career path and the highlights of his diverse role. Viewers also get to see where the experiments happen and hear from Maximilian Obst, one of the FELBE users, who gives a fascinating insight into his near-field optics research using SNOM (Scanning Near-field Optical Microscopy). Maximilian explains how FELBE is enabling science that would not be possible with a synchrotron light source.
Light sources around the world share a common quality. They all have the ability to deliver a ‘wow factor’ when people first step inside. From young, bright eyed, tech-savvy children; scientists embarking on their first experiments; right through to retired visitors who spent their younger years without telephones or TVs. Synchrotron and X-ray Free Electron Lasers (XFELs) deliver science and technology on a grand scale. In this #LightSourceSelfie, Ida, a Phd Student at the ESRF, and Michael, who undertakes experiments at the European XFEL, both recall their first day. The words they use include exciting, overwhelming, exhilarating, busy and fascinating. Michael remembers feeling slightly in the way but, at a certain point, he started to ask questions. From that first day he learnt to, “Always ask questions. You can’t ask enough questions!”
Thailand is home to the Synchrotron Light Research Institute (SLRI) and this week’s #LightSourceSelfie features three of their staff members – Dr Phakkhananan Pakawanit, Beamline Scientist, Dr Prapaiwan Sunwong, Accelerator Physicist, and Supawan Srichan, Engineer. During this enlightening video, they explain their roles, the challenges and what excites them about working at a light source. Dr Sunwong describes a big 7 year project to design and build a new 3.0 Gev synchrotron light source in the Eastern Economic Corridor of Innovation (EECi). In June 2022, SLRI will host the 13th International Particle Accelerator Conference (IPAC’22) in Bangkok. IPAC is the main international event for the worldwide accelerator community and industry. To find out more, visit www.ipac22.org
Academic and industrial researchers have access to world class experimental techniques at light sources around the world. Experimental time on the beamlines is extremely precious and in order to get the most out of this ‘beamtime’ scientists need expert advice and support. Today’s #LightSourceSelfie Monday Montage is a tribute to the brilliant scientists, engineers, computer scientists and other support staff who work at light sources and provide external researchers with the assistance they need to ensure their experiments are successful and they come away with useful data that will advance their scientific studies.
Monday Montage – Brilliant people support light source experiments
It’s #LoveYourDataWeek so it’s fitting that this week’s #LightSourceSelfie features a data expert. Mathew Cherukara leads the Computational X-ray Science Group at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago.
Mathew, who is from Kerala in India, works with his colleagues to develop the computational tools, algorithms and machine learning models used to analyse data from the beamlines at the APS. The first time Mathew saw a light source he recalls, “I couldn’t believe that science on this scale was being done every single day”. Mathew also talks about the fact that, after the APS upgrade, the data rates and computational needs will increase 100 to 1,000 times. For Mathew, the best thing about working at a light source is all the brilliant people working towards a common goal. When Mathew isn’t working, he enjoys taking long walks with his dog and we’re treated to a very cute dog moment at the end of the video #LoveYourDog!
#LightSourceSelfies was made possible thanks to the help of our contributors from synchrotrons and free electron lasers around the global lightsources.org community. We come together as one voice for the brightest science but with many different languages spoken. Today’s Monday Montage celebrates the wonderfully rich, international culture that exists within science. Greetings from the light sources family around the world!
he 3.4 km long European XFEL generates extremely intense X-ray flashes used by researchers from all over the world. The flashes are produced in underground tunnels and they enable scientists to conduct a wide range of experiments including mapping atomic details of viruses, filming chemical reactions, and studying processes in the interior of planets.
Michael Schneider is a physicist at the Max Born Institute in Berlin. He uses synchrotrons and free electron lasers, such as the European XFEL, to study magnetism and magnetic materials. Michael’s fascinating #LightSourceSelfie takes you inside the European XFEL where he recalls the fact that it was large scale facilities themselves that first attracted him to his area of fundamental research. The work is bringing us closer to a new generation of computing devices that work more like the neurons in our brains that the transistors that we currently have in our computers. Michael captures the dedication of his colleagues and the facility teams, along with the type of work that you can get involved with at large scale facilities. He also gives a brilliant overview of the stages involved in conducting research at a light source. Michael is clearly very passionate about his science, but also finds time for some great hobbies too!
