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Summer 2021 Shutdown

Last week the ALS returned to user operations after its summer shutdown. A lot of work was accomplished, including several large projects in the storage ring and maintenance and updates for the accelerator and beamlines. Read more »

2021 User Meeting Highlights

The Advanced Light Source (ALS) held its annual user meeting August 10–13, 2021, co-chaired by Users’ Executive Committee (UEC) members Alex Frano and Hope Michelsen. A benefit of the virtual platform was the increased number of people who could attend; almost 400 attendees on six different continents joined the plenary sessions. Read more »

Machine-Learning Team Receives 2021 Halbach Award

This year’s Halbach Award for Innovative Instrumentation at the ALS went to a team of accelerator physicists and computer scientists who were able to use machine-learning techniques to solve a problem that has plagued third-generation light sources for a long time: fluctuations in beam size due to the motion of insertion devices. Read more »

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 »

David Prendergast Wins 2021 Shirley Award

David Prendergast, an internationally recognized computational scientist whose first-principles calculations of x-ray spectra have helped with the interpretation of countless experiments done at the ALS, has been awarded the 2021 Shirley Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement by the ALS Users’ Executive Committee. Read more »

Chemical (and Strategic) Transformations at Beamline 9.0

The Chemical Dynamics beamline, used for gas-phase vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) experiments, was one of the first beamlines built at the ALS. Since then, the program has undergone several strategic transformations, enabling the study of complexity in clusters, aerosols, and nanoparticles using both VUV and soft x-ray radiation. Read more »

EPSCoR Collaboration Fosters New Research and New Careers

The DOE Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (DOE EPSCoR) encourages partnerships between national labs and researchers in qualifying states and territories. An EPSCoR collaboration with researchers from Kentucky has resulted in an ALS highlight, career advancement for young scientists, and a larger, center-scale proposal. Read more »

Winter 2021 Shutdown Recap

During the Winter 2021 shutdown, the ALS was a hive of activity, though social distancing requirements during the pandemic meant that the activity looked a bit different from years past. We began commissioning on March 26 and plan to return to user operations after commissioning concludes. Read more »