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2018 ALS User Meeting Highlights

Past, present, and future converged at the 2018 ALS User Meeting, where attendees celebrated the 25th anniversary of first light and CD-1 approval of the ALS Upgrade project. Planned with the next generation of users in mind, this year’s meeting emphasized tutorials on a wide variety of ALS techniques for both new and seasoned users. Read more »

Pupa Gilbert to Receive the 2018 Shirley Award

Pupa Gilbert, professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is the 2018 recipient of the David A. Shirley Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement at the ALS, “for her development of polarization-dependent imaging contrast mapping to image the orientation of carbonate nanocrystals in marine biominerals.” Read more »

Infrared Beams Show Cell Types in a Different Light

By shining highly focused infrared light on living cells, scientists hope to unmask individual cell identities and to diagnose whether the cells are diseased or healthy. Their focus is on developing a rapid, noninvasive way to easily identify cell types and features within living cells, to aid in biological and medical research. Read more »

ALS Bids Farewell to Division Deputy Zahid Hussain

In an event aptly titled “Zahid Fest,” ALS staff held a scientific symposium and celebration honoring the career of long-time Scientific Support Group Deputy Zahid Hussain and wishing him well in retirement. The day-long event featured scientific and biographical talks from a star-studded cast of researchers who have collaborated with Hussain over the years as well as a round of individual acknowledgements. Read more »

From Moon Rocks to Space Dust: Berkeley Lab’s Extraterrestrial Research

Berkeley Lab has a well-storied expertise in exploring samples of extraterrestrial origin. This research—which has helped us to understand the makeup and origins of objects within and beyond our solar system—stems from long-standing core capabilities in structural and chemical analyses and measurement at the microscale and nanoscale. Read more »

ALS Passes the 7000-Protein Milestone

The eight structural biology beamlines at the ALS have now collectively deposited over 7000 proteins into the Protein Data Bank (PDB), a worldwide, open-access repository of protein structures. The 7000th ALS protein (entry no. 6C7C) is an enzyme from Mycobacterium ulcerans (strain Agy99), solved with data from Beamline 5.0.2. Read more »

Meet Leda: Mother of Light

In Greek mythology, Leda is a Spartan queen and mother of the twins Castor and Pollux. In reference to the myth, Leda is also the name of the ALS’s recently delivered insertion device—an in-vacuum undulator. For the next eight months, Leda is taking up residence in the Building 15 high bay, awaiting installation during the January 2019 shutdown. Read more »

Local High Schoolers Get “The ALS Experience”

As part of a pilot program to strengthen the STEM career pipeline in the East Bay, Berkeley Lab’s Workforce Development & Education and the Advanced Light Source recently collaborated on a high school study trip. Students from two local high schools worked with scientists at the ALS to design custom experiments and then spent a day at the ALS running their experiments and learning about the ALS and Berkeley Lab. Read more »

New Small-Molecule Crystallography Beamline Achieves First Light

Beamline 12.2.1, the successor to Beamline 11.3.1, achieved first light on December 21, 2017. This new small-molecule crystallography beamline, which will take over the scientific program of 11.3.1, features a number of improvements that will significantly expand the capabilities available to users. Read more »

Dmitriy Voronov Receives Klaus Halbach Award

The 2017 Klaus Halbach Award for Innovative Instrumentation at the ALS was recently awarded to ALS Staff Scientist Dmitriy Voronov “for pioneering work in the area of advanced x-ray gratings.” The research that led up to Voronov’s award began about 10 years ago when he started at the ALS in the Experimental Systems Group with Howard Padmore. Read more »