Tag: User Meeting

International community gathers for Diamond’s Magnetic Materials Group User Meeting

International community gathers for Diamond’s Magnetic Materials Group User Meeting

Last week, over 100 scientists from across the international research community attended the first in a series of in person User Meetings taking place in 2024 at Diamond, the UK’s national synchrotron science facility.

The Magnetic Materials Group (MMG) User Meeting, incorporating a Theory of Soft X-ray Spectroscopy Workshop, took place from Monday 3rd – Wednesday 5th June. Delegates heard talks from invited speakers from across Europe who shared their latest research results in areas such as altermagnetism, spin textures, strong correlated systems and functional materials. Diamond scientists presented on the facilities of the MMG, which enable a wide range of polarised X-ray based research into novel materials and phenomena. This included a presentation on one of the Diamond-II upgrade flagship beamlines I17, which will offer Coherent Soft X-ray Imaging and Diffraction (CSXID) and is currently in design phase.

Sarnjeet Dhesi, Diamond’s Science Group Leader for the MMG, says, “It was fantastic to see our user community network and discuss new collaborations that could be enabled by upgrades to our facilities. “

Lightsources.org was one of the event sponsors, along with ELMITEC and BESTEC, and supported the MMG User Meeting by providing the poster prizes. A panel chosen by the organising committee selected the three best posters and Prof. Kevin Edmonds, a Diamond User Committee representative from University of Nottingham, and Silvana Westbury, Project Manager for Lightsources.org, presented the prizes at the end of the meeting.

Winners were:

1st prize 🏅 went to Myron Huzan for their poster on ‘Quantifying the influence of 3d-4s mixing on linearly coordinated metal ions.’

Image: Prof. Kevin Edmonds, a Diamond User Committee representative from University of Nottingham (left), and Silvana Westbury, Project Manager for Lightsources.org (centre), presenting 1st prize to Myron Huzan (right)

Credit: Stefania Mazzorana/Diamond

2nd prize🏅, for their poster on ‘The magnetic order and excitations in GdRu2Si2’, went to George Wood.

3rd prize🏅, for their poster on ‘Strain modulated charge ordered transitions in a highly-correlated electron material’, went to Diego Barlettani.

Diamond’s next User Meeting, which is the Spectroscopy Group User Meeting, takes place this week (registration for this event is now closed). Future User Meetings covering Extreme Conditions as well as Imaging and Microscopy will take place later in the year. Keep an eye on the Diamond and Lightsources.org websites to find out when registration opens for these in person events.  

To learn more about the Magnetic Material Group, visit the Diamond website

Apart Yet Together: Virtual 2020 NSLS-II & CFN Users’ Meeting

Apart Yet Together: Virtual 2020 NSLS-II & CFN Users’ Meeting

A record-breaking number of attendees gathered virtually at the NSLS-II & CFN Users’ Meeting to discuss the most recent developments in photon science and nanoscience

Upton—From May 18 to 20, more than 1500 registered attendees from 37 countries around the world participated in the first-ever virtual joint Users’ Meeting of the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) and the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II)—two U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facilities at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory. Holding the annual joint Users’ Meeting is a long-standing tradition at Brookhaven Lab, where attendees enjoy scientific discourse during the warm spring days on Long Island. 

While the Coronavirus pandemic limited the Lab’s ability to bring attendees on site for 2020, it presented a new opportunity for the conference organizers to hold a virtual Users’ Meeting, which attracted five times more attendees than ever before. The meeting included eight workshops, each held in a virtual meeting rooms with record-breaking numbers of attendees, ranging from 120 to more than 400. The meeting’s plenary session included more than 600 attendees listening and asking questions. 

Read more on the NSLS-II website

Image: NSLS-II aerial
17th Users’ Meeting at SESAME and inauguration of the guest house

17th Users’ Meeting at SESAME and inauguration of the guest house

Some 80 scientists from the region and beyond are meeting at SESAME on 30 November and 1 December to discuss the scientific programme and latest results from the laboratory. For the first time, the Users’ meeting is being held on the SESAME campus in a new guest house and meeting facility. Another first this year is that the meeting is being held jointly with the European Synchrotron and FEL User Organisation, ESUO, a sign of SESAME’s growing integration into the international research landscape.

The programme opened with a welcome from the Laboratory’s Director, Khaled Toukan, and an update on the SESAME scientific programme and beamlines. It continued with presentations of results from experiments conducted at SESAME. There were also presentations from representatives of European light sources, as well as from the OPEN SESAME consortium, an EU funded project that has provided training support since 2017 and concludes this year, the BEATS consortium, another EU funded project building a tomography beamline at SESAME, and from HESEB, a SESAME-Helmholtz collaboration for the installation of a new soft X-ray beamline.

>Read more on the SESAME website
Image: A group photo for the 17th annual SESAME Users’ meeting.
Credit: SESAME.

Article about the inauguration of SESAME’s guest house.

2018 ALS User Meeting Highlights

2018 ALS User Meeting Highlights

Past, present, and future converged at the ALS User Meeting, held October 2–4, 2018. About 480 registrants helped celebrate the 25th anniversary of first light at the ALS and the announcement of CD-1 approval for the ALS Upgrade project (ALS-U), a major federal milestone. Users’ Executive Committee (UEC) Chair Will Chueh kicked things off by acknowledging the organizers—UEC members Jennifer Ciezak-Jenkins, Alex Frañó, and Michael Jacobs—and thanking the ALS for its support. He also explained the organizing principle behind the program: to engage student and young-scientist users and strengthen interactions between users in general. Jeff Neaton, Berkeley Lab’s Associate Laboratory Director for Energy Sciences, then extended an official welcome to attendees. He noted that it’s been an exciting year for the ALS, which gained a new director, Steve Kevan, in addition to CD-1 approval for ALS-U.

>Read more on the Advanced Light Source website

Image: Plenary session, Day 1.
Credit: Peter DaSilva/Berkeley Lab

Impressions from the 30th MAX IV user meeting

Impressions from the 30th MAX IV user meeting

At the 30th MAX IV user meeting over 250 attendees met to discuss and learn for three days in Lund.

The impressions that we collected from the meeting are positive overall.
There was a very good atmosphere, good backup from the users, lively discussion, and full rooms for the parallel sessions. These are very important signs for for us going forward, says interim director Ian McNulty and science director Marjolein Thunnissen. We also talked to a few of the users who appreciated that the user meeting is a good place to meet with colleagues and collaborators to discuss and learn. The other comment that we got from several of them was that it was important that they now have a clear time plan and overview of the status so that they can plan for their experiments at MAX IV.

>Read more on the MAX IV Laboratory website

Record number of participants at User Meeting

Record number of participants at User Meeting

Celebrating a year of glorious firsts and outlining future developments

“Welcome to the first European XFEL user meeting with actual users!” said Martin Meedom Nielsen, head of the European XFEL council as he opened the three day event on 24 January in front of a packed lecture hall on the DESY campus in Hamburg. With 1200 registered participants from ca. 100 institutions from 30 countries, this year’s joint European XFEL and DESY photon science users’ meeting, the first since operation began, was the biggest yet.

Meedom Nielsen and European XFEL Managing Director Robert Feidenhans’l started the meeting by summarizing the achievements and developments of the last year and thanking everyone who had contributed to the facility’s success. “It has been a fantastic year,” said Feidenhans’l looking back on his first year as director of the facility, “a tough year and we have worked really hard, but a fantastic year.” “2017 was a year of glorious firsts” said Meedom Nielsen, highlighting especially the facility’s inauguration in September and the beams of laser light that shone across the city to mark the occasion. “Hamburg was shining for European XFEL, and European XFEL was shining back” he said.

>Read more on the European XFEL website

 Photo Credit: European XFEL

 

1200 participants at annual users’ meeting

1200 participants at annual users’ meeting

Record number of attendees at the joint DESY and European XFEL event

The joint meeting of users of DESY’s research light sources and the European XFEL X-ray laser once again drew a record number of attendees to Hamburg. Some 1200 participants from nearly 100 institutions from around 30 countries have registered for the three-day event (24-26 January) held at DESY, more than ever before. A particular highlight this year is the beginning of scientific user operation at the European XFEL, from which first results were presented.

“The users’ meeting in Hamburg is the largest in the world for research with X-ray light sources, and we are very proud of that,” emphasised DESY Director Helmut Dosch. “The tremendous interest reflects the importance of these unique research tools for all natural sciences and beyond.” DESY’s research director for photon science, Edgar Weckert, added: “With the X-ray lasers FLASH and European XFEL and the storage-ring-based X-ray source PETRA III, the metropolitan region offers a worldwide unique combination of high-intensity research light sources that serve a wide range of disciplines, from biology and medicine to energy, material and earth science to physics, chemistry and even art history.”

Image: DESY, Axel Heimken
BER II and BESSY II User Meeting at HZB

BER II and BESSY II User Meeting at HZB

More than 600 scientists registered for the 9th annual BER II and BESSY II User Meeting in December.

The Friends of Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin recognised outstanding work in the field of synchrotron radiation with an Innovation Award, and the best doctoral dissertation with the Ernst-Eckard-Koch prize.

Research with synchrotron radiation was the focus on Wednesday. On Thursday, the „Science Day“, a broad overview on user research was given. The public talk entitled “Interfacing with the brain using organic electronics” found great appeal with the audience: George Malliaras from the University of Cambridge spoke about the potential of organic electronics as brain implants for treating neurological diseases such as epilepsy. New materials and their characterisation at synchrotron sources will play a crucial role in this development. A vendor exhibition by 56 companies on new technical and optical instruments for research was well visited by the scientists.

>Read more on the HZB website.

Image: The Innovation Award of Freundeskreis HZB was given to a team of DESY, Hamburg.
Credit: HZB