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2021 Renner Award winner Andrea “Andi” Jones

At this year’s ALS User Meeting, Andrea “Andi” Jones, proposal coordinator in the User Services Office, was honored with the 2021 Tim Renner User Services Award. The ALS Users’ Executive Committee selected Jones for “her dedication and commitment in supporting the User Office that have allowed efficient proposal reviews and beamtime allocations during the pandemic.” Read more »

Sifting through Fragments for COVID-19 Treatments

COVID-19 vaccines are essential for preventing serious disease, but the identification of new drugs is still necessary for the treatment of patients who become sick as a result of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Here, scientists used computational docking and crystallography to screen large numbers of small molecules for potential use in drug compounds. Read more »

September 1 Proposal Deadline and COVID updates

The ALS is committed to supporting the science of our users, and we’re looking forward to welcoming back more on-site users this fall while continuing to support remote experiments. Please review the requirements for access to the ALS and remember to submit your proposals for the next cycle by 11:59 p.m. Pacific on September 1. Read more »

Na Hyun Jo, Materials Sciences Postdoc

Na Hyun Jo has only been at Berkeley Lab for five months, but she’s already helping to organize the Energy Sciences Area Science Hour. Find out more about her research and what inspired her to become a scientist. Read more »

A Multiscale Picture of Oxygen Loss in Battery Electrodes

In lithium-ion batteries, oxygen atoms leak out of electrode particles as the lithium moves back and forth between electrodes. Now, researchers have measured this process at multiple length scales, showing how the oxygen loss changes the electrode’s structure and chemistry, gradually reducing the amount of energy it can store. Read more »

In a Hawaiian Lava Fountain, Fluid Magma Turns Brittle

Compared to the violent explosions of Mount Vesuvius or Mount St. Helens, Hawaiian volcanic eruptions are relatively calm, characterized by flowing rivers and fountains of lava. Here, researchers have discovered that even low-viscosity magma sometimes behaves more like brittle glass that shatters into fine particles. Read more »

Main Attraction: Scientists Create World’s Thinnest Magnet

A one-atom-thin 2D magnet that operates at room temperature could lead to new applications in computing and electronics—such as high-density, compact spintronic memory devices—and new tools for the study of quantum physics. X-ray experiments at the ALS characterized the material’s magnetic parameters under high temperature. Read more »

Alpha N’Diaye, Research Scientist

Alpha N’Diaye first came to Berkeley Lab as a postdoc, but his interest in Berkeley was piqued far earlier. Find out what inspired teenage Alpha, and what keeps him here to this day. Read more »

Mineral Microstructures Shed Light on Planet-Scale Dynamics

To explore what happens to minerals under the extreme conditions in Earth’s mantle, researchers developed an x-ray technique that bridges the gap between methods that reveal bulk properties and those that focus on individual crystals. Use of the technique has shed light on the dynamics of tectonic-plate subduction in Earth’s lower mantle. Read more »