Category: National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS II)

JoAnne Hewett Named Director of Brookhaven National Laboratory

JoAnne Hewett Named Director of Brookhaven National Laboratory

The Board of Directors of Brookhaven Science Associates (BSA) has named theoretical physicist JoAnne Hewett as the next director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and BSA president. BSA, a partnership between Stony Brook University (SBU) and Battelle, manages and operates Brookhaven Lab for DOE’s Office of Science. Hewett will also hold the title of professor in SBU’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and professor at SBU’s C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics.

“JoAnne has a strong research background and extensive experience as a scientist and leader,” said DOE Office of Science Director Asmeret Asefaw Berhe. “She is a great choice to advance the Department of Energy’s priorities at Brookhaven—from fundamental breakthroughs to applications that improve people’s lives each and every day.”

Hewett’s appointment comes after an international search that began in summer 2022. Current Brookhaven Lab Director Doon Gibbs announced in March 2022 his plans to step down after leading the Laboratory for nearly a decade.

Hewett comes to Brookhaven from SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, CA, where she most recently served as associate lab director (ALD) for fundamental physics and chief research officer. She also is a professor of particle physics and astrophysics at SLAC/Stanford University.

“JoAnne brings vital experience and proven leadership skills to further Brookhaven Lab’s game-changing discoveries and innovative breakthroughs that benefit science and society,” said Maurie McInnis, president, Stony Brook University, and co-chair, BSA Board of Directors. “As Brookhaven advances major projects, expands its mission, and further modernizes its campus where scientists are solving the most urgent challenges of our time, we are pleased to welcome her as the Lab’s next director.”

Read more on the BNL website

Image: JoAnne Hewett 

Credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Building Particle Accelerators Takes More Than a Village

Building Particle Accelerators Takes More Than a Village

From magnets to power supplies, NSLS-II experts support accelerator upgrades across the Nation.

Each year, thousands of people travel far and wide to see architectural marvels such as the towering steps of the Kukulcán temple in in Chichen Itza or the intricate facade of the Cologne Cathedral in Germany. Like these marvels of history and culture, thousands of researchers travel to the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) five light source facilities each year. They don’t come for the views, though, they come to push the boundaries of science—in fields ranging from batteries to pharmaceuticals—by using the ultrabright synchrotron light, mostly x-rays, from these facilities to conduct experiments.

This light doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. It needs to be generated by large, complex particle accelerators. And, to keep the x-rays as bright as possible, scientists and engineers are working constantly to advance them. This story highlights ongoing collaborative projects of the Accelerator Division at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), located at DOE’s Brookhaven Lab.

According to historical sources, it took the Germans over 600 years to build the original Cologne Cathedral, while archeologists speculate that the Temple of Kukulcán took at least 200 years to build in two phases. Thousands of people worked on these monuments during these extremely long construction periods. This is a feat they share with modern particle accelerator projects. While the initial construction of NSLS-II took only a decade, it still involved an international effort of hundreds of people from many disciplines and professions.

From the civil engineering challenges of the building design to the construction of the hundreds of magnets inside the accelerator, it truly takes more than a village to build a particle accelerator for a synchrotron light source. Similarly, many modern accelerator projects span multiple institutions and countries to leverage the expertise in the field.

Read more on the Brookhaven National Laboratory (NBL)

Image: The photo shows a view of the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) accelerator tunnel located at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Revealing the thermal heat dance of magnetic domains

Revealing the thermal heat dance of magnetic domains

Scientists invented a new way of tracking electronic properties inside materials, and used it to visualize magnetic domains in a previously unseen way.

Everyone knows that holding two magnets together will lead to one of two results: they stick together, or they push each other apart. From this perspective, magnetism seems simple, but scientists have struggled for decades to really understand how magnetism behaves on the smallest scales. On the near-atomic level, magnetism is made of many ever-shifting kingdoms—called magnetic domains—that create the magnetic properties of the material. While scientists know these domains exist, they are still looking for the reasons behind this behavior.

Now, a collaboration led by scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the Max Born Institute (MBI) published a study in Nature in which they used a novel analysis technique—called coherent correlation imaging (CCI)—to image the evolution of magnetic domains in time and space without any previous knowledge. The scientists could not see the “dance of the domains” during the measurement but only afterward, when they used the recorded data to “rewind the tape.”

The “movie” of the domains shows how the boundaries of these domains shift back and forth in some areas but stay constant in others. The researchers attribute this behavior to a property of the material called “pinning.” While pinning is a known property of magnetic materials, the team could directly image for the first time how a network of pinning sites affects the motion of interconnected domain walls.

“Many details about the changes in magnetic materials are only accessible through direct imaging, which we couldn’t do until now. It’s basically a dream come true for studying magnetic motion in materials,” said Wen Hu, scientist at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) and co-corresponding author of the study.

Read more on the Brookhaven National Laboratory website

Image: The image shows the areas where the borders of magnetic domains accumulate over time. It is similar to a photo of a traffic intersection taken at night with a long exposure time. In such a photo, we would see brighter areas along the paths that most cars’ headlights traveled. Here we see brighter areas where most domain walls come together.

DOE funds pilot study focused on biosecurity for bioenergy crops

DOE funds pilot study focused on biosecurity for bioenergy crops

Research into threats from pathogens and pests would speed short-term response and spark long-term mitigation strategies

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science has selected Brookhaven National Laboratory to lead a new research effort focused on potential threats to crops grown for bioenergy production. Understanding how such bioenergy crops could be harmed by known or new pests or pathogens could help speed the development of rapid responses to mitigate damage and longer-term strategies for preventing such harm. The pilot project could evolve into a broader basic science capability to help ensure the development of resilient and sustainable bioenergy crops as part of a transition to a net-zero carbon economy.

The idea is modeled on the way DOE’s National Virtual Biotechnology Laboratory (NVBL) pooled basic science capabilities to address the COVID-19 pandemic. With $5 Million in initial funding, allocated over the next two years, Brookhaven Lab and its partners will develop a coordinated approach for addressing biosecurity challenges. This pilot study will lead to a roadmap for building out a DOE-wide capability known as the National Virtual Biosecurity for Bioenergy Crops Center (NVBBCC).

“A robust biosecurity capability optimized to respond rapidly to biological threats to bioenergy crops requires an integrated and versatile platform,” said Martin Schoonen, Brookhaven Lab’s Associate Laboratory Director for Environment, Biology, Nuclear Science & Nonproliferation, who will serve as principal investigator for the pilot project. “With this initial funding, we’ll develop a bio-preparedness platform for sampling and detecting threats, predicting how they might propagate, and understanding how pests or pathogens interact with bioenergy crops at the molecular level—all of which are essential for developing short-term control measures and long-term solutions.”

Read more on the Brookhaven National Laboratory website

Image: Pilot study on an important disease in sorghum (above) will develop understanding of threats to bioenergy crops, potentially speeding the development of short-term responses and long-term mitigation strategies

Credit: US Department of Energy Genomic Science Program

Computer, Is My Experiment Finished?

Computer, Is My Experiment Finished?

Everyone knows that the Computer—an artificial intelligence (AI)-like entity—on a Star Trek spaceship does everything from brewing tea to compiling complex analyses of flux data. But how are they used at real research facilities? How can AI agents—computer programs that can act based on a perceived environment—help scientists discover next-generation batteries or quantum materials? Three staff members at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) described how AI agents support scientists using the facility’s research tools. As a U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science user facility located at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, NSLS-II offers its experimental capabilities to scientists from all over the world who use it to reveal the mysteries of materials for tomorrow’s technology.

From improving experimental conditions to enhancing data quality, Andi Barbour, Dan Olds, Maksim Rakitin, and their colleagues are working on various AI projects at NSLS-II. A recent overview publication in Digital Discovery outlines several—but not all—ongoing AI projects at the facility.

First contact with AI

While movies often show AI agents as sentient super computers that can perform various tasks, real-world AI agents differ greatly from this portrayal.

“What we mean when we say AI is that we come up with an algorithm or a method—basically some mathematical process—that is going to do a ‘thing’ for us, such as classifying, analyzing, or making decisions, but we’re not going to hardcode the logic,” explained Olds, a physicist who works at one of NSLS-II’s scientific instruments that enables a wide range of research projects. The instruments at NSLS-II are called beamlines because they are a combination of an x-ray beam delivery system and an experimental station.

Rakitin, a physicist specialized in developing software to collect or analyze data at NSLS-II, added, “Instead of giving the program—the AI agent—a model, it builds its own model through training. If we want it to recognize a cat, we show it a cat instead of explaining that it is a furry animal with four legs, pointy ears, a tail, and so on. The program has to figure out how to identify a cat by itself.”

Researchers at facilities such as NSLS-II have two main reasons for adapting AI agents to their needs: the sheer volume of data and its complexity. Twenty years ago, it took several minutes to snap a data image—such as a diffraction pattern—of a battery. Now, at the beamline Olds works at, they can take the same shot in a fraction of a second. While this allows more research to happen at the beamline, it outpaces the traditional strategies used to analyze the data.

Barbour, a chemical physicist, faces the second challenge, complex data, in her work studying dynamics in quantum materials. Together with her collaborators, she investigates how the atomic and electronic order in these materials evolve under variable conditions.

“When we do experiments at the beamline, we are looking for correlations and patterns in the data over time. So, if we would need to write one long program that captures all the possibilities of our experiments, it would be incredibly complicated, hard to read, terrible to maintain, and a nightmare to automate. But an AI tool can learn how to handle our complex data without the need to explain every detail to the agent,” Barbour said.

Read more on the Brookhaven National Laboratory website

Image: From left to right: Andi Barbour, Maksim Rakitin, and Dan Olds on the balcony overseeing the experimental floor of the National Synchrotron Light Source II

NSLS-II Researchers Win 2022 Microscopy Today Innovation Award

NSLS-II Researchers Win 2022 Microscopy Today Innovation Award

The team developed a set of bonded x-ray lenses to overcome a long-standing alignment issue, making nanometer resolution more accessible than ever before.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory received the 2022 Microscopy Today Innovation Award for their development of a system with bonded x-ray lenses that make nanoscale resolution more accessible than ever before. When the team at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), a DOE Office of Science user facility, tested the new lens system, they achieved a resolution down to approx. 10 nanometers.

“We need technologies of the future to tackle some of society’s biggest challenges — from microelectronics to tiny qubits for quantum computers to longer-lasting batteries,” said John Hill, NSLS-II Director. “However, to develop these new devices, researchers need to study materials at the nanoscale. And this where these new lenses really come into their own. They make focusing hard x-ray beams down to a few nanometers much easier than ever before. By using the very focused x-ray beams that these lenses produce, we can reveal the function, structure, and chemistry of next-generation materials on the nanoscale. This crucial breakthrough was only made possible through years of intense work by experts—who are world-leaders in their respective fields—working together. I am delighted that their work has been recognized by this award and very proud to have this new lens system at NSLS-II.”

Read more on the Brookhaven National Laboratory website

Image: The members of the development team in front of NSLS-II. From left to right: Yong Chu, Hanfei Yan, Weihe Xu, Wei Xu, Xiaojing Huang, Ming Lu, Natalie Bouet, Evgeny Nazaretski. Not pictured: Juan Zhou and Maxim Zalalutdinov.

Ryan Tappero’s #My1stLight

Ryan Tappero’s #My1stLight

Ryan is the XFM Lead Beamline Scientist at NSLS-II on Long Island, New York. His #My1stLight celebrates the night back in 2017 when the beamline succeeded in taking first light! A smiling team AND results. Definitely worth remembering as part of our 75 Years of Science with Synchrotron Light #My1stLight campaign

Read more about NSLS-II’s XFM beamline here

Meet Greg Fries, NSLS-II Accelerator Division Deputy Director for Projects

Meet Greg Fries, NSLS-II Accelerator Division Deputy Director for Projects

Fries plays a key role at NSLS-II, straddling the line between management and workers ‘in the field’ to ensure projects run smoothly and safely

Greg Fries is the deputy director for projects in the accelerator division at National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility located at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory. At NSLS-II, electrons are accelerated to nearly the speed of light and directed into a “storage ring,” where they emit x-rays as they circulate. The x-rays are used to study a huge range of materials and samples, from batteries to potential new pharmaceuticals.

What do you do at NSLS-II?

In this role, I wear many hats. I’m responsible for planning and coordinating the installation and major maintenance activities related to the accelerator. I work closely with the engineers and technicians, as to how to best manage the time that we have during machine shutdowns. I’m also involved in the construction of new beamlines; for example, right now I am responsible for the accelerator infrastructure for the building of the High Energy Engineering X-ray Scattering (HEX) beamline and the NSLS-II Experimental Tools II (NEXT-II) projects. Ultimately, I work with the accelerator division staff to deliver the insertion devices, front ends, and other beamline systems. In addition, I manage the overall staffing plan and budget for the accelerator division.

I am also the work control manager for NSLS-II, supporting both the accelerator and photon divisions. In this role, I help implement work planning and control processes, and train new work control coordinators. A lot of what I do is coordination among groups to make sure that everything runs smoothly.

Right now, I’m also working on the Advanced Light Source upgrade (ALS-U) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. I manage the budget and schedule for their power supplies and am fully integrated into their team. I’ve also been able to visit many of the other labs, particularly those who are going through upgrades, and be part of those processes. I’ve learned many lessons by being involved in the construction and maintenance of NSLS-II that I’ve been able to share with projects at other labs.

Read more on the BNL website

Image: Greg Fries stands in front of the main entrance of NSLS-II

Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory

Hidden distortions trigger promising thermoelectric property

Hidden distortions trigger promising thermoelectric property

Study describes new mechanism for lowering thermal conductivity to aid search for materials that convert heat to electricity or electricity to heat

In a world of materials that normally expand upon heating, one that shrinks along one 3D axis while expanding along another stands out. That’s especially true when the unusual shrinkage is linked to a property important for thermoelectric devices, which convert heat to electricity or electricity to heat.

In a paper just published in the journal Advanced Materials, a team of scientists from Northwestern University and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory describe the previously hidden sub-nanoscale origins of both the unusual shrinkage and the exceptional thermoelectric properties in this material, silver gallium telluride (AgGaTe2). The discovery reveals a quantum mechanical twist on what drives the emergence of these properties—and opens up a completely new direction for searching for new high-performance thermoelectrics.

“Thermoelectric materials will be transformational in green and sustainable energy technologies for heat energy harvesting and cooling—but only if their performance can be improved,” said Hongyao Xie, a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern and first author on the paper. “We want to find the underlying design principles that will allow us to optimize the performance of these materials,” Xie said.

Thermoelectric devices are currently used in limited, niche applications, including NASA’s Mars rover, where heat released by the radioactive decay of plutonium is converted into electricity. Future applications might include materials controlled by voltage to achieve very stable temperatures critical for operation of high-tech optical detectors and lasers.

The main barrier to wider adoption is the need for materials with just the right cocktail of properties, including good electrical conductivity but resistance to the flow of heat.

Read more on the BNL website

Image: Brookhaven Lab members of the research team: Simon Billinge, Milinda Abeykoon, and Emil Bozin adjust instruments for data collection at the Pair Distribution Function beamline of the National Synchrotron Light Source II. In this setup, a stream of hot air heats samples with degree-by-degree precision as x-rays collect data on how the material changes.

Seeing more deeply into nanomaterials

Seeing more deeply into nanomaterials

New 3D imaging tool reveals engineered and self-assembled nanoparticle lattices with highest resolution yet—7nm—about 1/100,000 of the width of a human hair

From designing new biomaterials to novel photonic devices, new materials built through a process called bottom-up nanofabrication, or self-assembly, are opening up pathways to new technologies with properties tuned at the nanoscale. However, to fully unlock the potential of these new materials, researchers need to “see” into their tiny creations so that they can control the design and fabrication in order to enable the material’s desired properties.

This has been a complex challenge that researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Columbia University have overcome for the first time, imaging the inside of a novel material self-assembled from nanoparticles with seven nanometer resolution, about 1/100,000 of the width of a human hair. In a new paper published on April 7, 2022 in Science, the researchers showcase the power of their new high-resolution x-ray imaging technique to reveal the inner structure of the nanomaterial. 

The team designed the new nanomaterial using DNA as a programmable construction material, which enables them to create novel engineered materials for catalysis, optics, and extreme environments. During the creation process of these materials, the different building blocks made of DNA and nanoparticles shift into place on their own based on a defined “blueprint”—called a template—designed by the researchers. However, to image and exploit these tiny structures with x-rays, they needed to convert them into inorganic materials that could withstand x-rays while providing useful functionality. For the first time, the researchers could see the details, including the imperfections within their newly arranged nanomaterials.

Read more on the BNL website

Image: An artist’s impression of how the researchers used x-ray tomography as a magnifying lens to see into the inner structure of nanomaterials

Yonghua Du recognized as a highly cited researcher 2021

Yonghua Du recognized as a highly cited researcher 2021

Du was cited by Web of Science in its Cross-Field category, which identifies researchers who have contributed to highly cited papers across several different fields

Brookhaven Lab scientist Yonghua Du has been named a highly cited researcher in Web of Science’s 2021 report. Each year, the Web of Science publishes a list of researchers who have demonstrated significant and broad influence in a chosen field or fields over the past decade through highly cited papers. The list includes the top 1 percent of researchers by citation for a chosen field or fields. Du was recognized in the cross-field category.

“I have spent my career at synchrotron facilities, collaborating with as many researchers all over the world to uncover the secrets of their samples using our unique tools. Many excellent papers were published,” said Du. “So, I am proud of this achievement.”

In his position as a beamline scientist at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), Du balances his time between developing more research capabilities for his beamline and building strong collaborations with researchers from across the globe. These researchers—called users—work together with NSLS-II experts to solve the biggest scientific challenges of today using the facility’s unique research tools.

Read more on the Brookhaven National Lab website

Image: Brookhaven Lab scientist Yonghua Du standing in front of the Tender Energy X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (TES) beamline at the National Synchrotron Light Source II

Reshaping the world of research through remote experimentation

Reshaping the world of research through remote experimentation

We all remember the impact of stay-at-home-orders on our everyday lives in spring 2020. However, it was not only restaurants, salons, flower shops, and bookstores that had to close their doors. National user research facilities shut down most operations, closing the doors to thousands of visiting scientists, and bringing research on new batteries, pharmaceutical drugs, and many other materials to a grinding halt, at a time when the country needed these facilities more than ever. So, seven user research facilities decided to form a team of experts, the Remote Access Working Group (RAWG), to figure out how these facilities could keep the science going even when the researchers couldn’t access them in person.

The solution is as simple as it is difficult. Research facilities that serve visiting researchers have to create an environment in which experiments can be run from afar – with nearly no human interaction. Scientists have dubbed this new way of doing research remote experimentation. While each facility started the unexpected journey to remote experimentation on their own, the RAWG has brought all the different ideas together to help each facility overcome the numerous challenges encountered along the way.

Most challenges result from the nature of how these facilities operate. All seven facilities are neutron or light sources funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science. This means they generate highly intense beams of neutrons or x-rays that visiting scientists use to study the inner workings of materials. These visiting researchers, or users, collaborate with facility staff to study everything from ancient mummies to novel quantum materials, generating new knowledge daily.

The Desolation of COVID-19

In a world before COVID-19, these user facilities were a hub for research teams. Scientists traveled to them, used unique tools to study their materials, worked with brilliant people on all kinds of scientific questions, then left the facility with new data that could answer these questions. With the ongoing pandemic, travelling to a facility in a different state—let alone a different country—is not an option. And with this, the well-established cycle of creating new knowledge was broken.

To re-start this cycle without going back to the old ways, each facility was confronted with a host of challenges that ranged from how to control an experiment from afar to how to get the samples to the facility in the first place. This was just the tip of the iceberg of issues the pandemic created. The RAWG’s mission is to share experiences and solutions for these issues among the facilities.

The Fellowship of Remote Experimentation

The RAWG was built upon the existing collaboration of the five DOE light source facilities. Their directors meet twice a year to discuss common challenges so that they can form teams to tackle various issues. So, it was only natural to join forces again when COVID-19 hit.

Read more on the Brookhaven website

Image: Beamline scientist, Olaf Borkiewicz from the APS, is wearing a Hololens for a virtual session of National School on Neutron and X-Ray Scattering held each summer. (Note: This photo was taken while fully vaccinated individuals were allowed to not wear masks indoors.) 

Credit: APS, Argonne National Laboratory

I am doing science that is more important than my sleep!

I am doing science that is more important than my sleep!

NSLS-II #LightSourceSelfie

Dan Olds is an associate physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory where he works as a beamline scientist at NSLS-II. Dan’s research involves combining artificial intelligence and machine learning to perform real-time analysis on streaming data while beamline experiments are being performed. Often these new AI driven methods are critical to success during in situ studies of materials. These include next generational battery components, accident safe nuclear fuels, catalytic materials and other emerging technologies that will help us develop clean energy solutions to fight climate change.

Dan’s #LightSourceSelfie delves into what attracted him to this area of research, the inspiration he gets from helping users on the beamline and the addictive excitement that comes from doing science at 3am.

Science that just can’t wait until morning!

Science that just can’t wait until morning!

We know by now that coffee ranks highly on the list of things that help get light source users through their night shifts. This #LightSourceSelfie also include insights on positive thinking that can provide a much needed boost to get you through to the morning. These insights are brought to you from staff scientists at LCLS and NSLS-II in the USA and Diamond in the UK.

Revolutionizing data access through Tiled

Revolutionizing data access through Tiled

Every time scientists study a new material for future batteries or investigate diseases to develop new drugs, they must wade through an ocean of data. Today, a whole ecosystem of scientific tools creates a wild variety of data to be explored. This exploration will now get a lot easier thanks to scientists at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), located at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory. Their freshly rolled-out software tool—called Tiled—allows researchers to see, slice, and study their data more conveniently than ever before. This new data access tool makes finding and analyzing the right piece of data a walk in the park compared to previous methods, paving the way for the next scientific breakthrough.

As one of the 28 DOE Office of Science user facilities across the Nation, NSLS-II welcomes nearly 2,000 scientists each year to use its ultrabright light, tackling the greatest challenges in materials and life science. These visiting researchers come from around the globe to collaborate with experts and use the one-of-a-kind research tools at NSLS-II. They zap their samples, ranging from ancient rocks to novel quantum materials, with intense x-rays and catch outgoing signals using advanced detectors. In turn, these detectors spit out streams of data, waiting to be analyzed by scientists.

“Working with data is a central part of all research, and yet a challenge on its own. It comes in a multitude of formats, in varying sizes and shapes, and not every piece of it is useful for the researchers. This is why developing a software tool that makes accessing, seeing, and sorting through data so important,” said Dan Allan, computational scientist at NSLS-II.

Read more on the Brookhaven National Laboratory website

Image: Scientists can use Tiled to seamlessly access data stores across various formats such as files, data bases or other data services. Tiled allows its users to see, slice, and study their data using the most convenient tool for them

Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory

Physics on Autopilot

Physics on Autopilot

Brookhaven National Lab applies AI to make big experiments autonomous

As a young scientist experimenting with neutrons and X-rays, Kevin Yager often heard this mantra: “Don’t waste beamtime.” Maximizing productive use of the potent and popular facilities that generate concentrated particles and radiation frequently required working all night to complete important experiments. Yager, who now leads the Electronic Nanomaterials Group at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), couldn’t help but think “there must be a better way.”

Yager focused on streamlining and automating as much of an experiment as possible and wrote a lot of software to help. Then he had an epiphany. He realized artificial intelligence and machine-learning methods could be applied not only to mechanize simple and boring tasks humans don’t enjoy but also to reimagine experiments.

“Rather than having human scientists micromanaging experimental details,” he remembers thinking, “we could liberate them to actually focus on scientific insight, if only the machine could intelligently handle all the low-level tasks. In such a world, a scientific experiment becomes less about coming up with a sequence of steps, and more about correctly telling the AI what the scientific goal is.”

Yager and colleagues are developing methods that exploit AI and machine learning to automate as much of an experiment as possible. “This includes physically handling samples with robotics, triggering measurements, analyzing data, and – crucially – automating the experimental decision-making,” he explains. “That is, the instrument should decide by itself what sample to measure next, the measurement parameters to set, and so on.”

Read more on the Brookhaven website

Image: Example dataset collected during an autonomous X-ray scattering experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). An artificial intelligence/machine learning decision-making algorithm autonomously selected various points throughout the sample to measure. At each position, an X-ray scattering image (small squares) is collected and automatically analyzed. The algorithm considers the full dataset as it selects subsequent experiments.

Credit: Kevin Yager, BNL