Skip to main content

ALS

Home / News

All News & Updates

Peter Nico, UEC Chair

Peter Nico, recently appointed chair of the UEC, brings a varied user perspective to his new post: like many environmental science users, Nico has worked at a number of different ALS beamlines, from hard x-ray tomography to x-ray diffraction to STXM to infrared. It’s the combination of these multiple capabilities that he sees as one of the greatest assets the ALS has to offer users. Read more »

IBM Probes Material Capabilities at the ALS

Vanadium dioxide, one of the few known materials that acts like an insulator at low temperatures but like a metal at warmer temperatures, is a somewhat futuristic material that could yield faster and much more energy-efficient electronic devices. Researchers from IBM’s forward-thinking Spintronic Science and Applications Center (SpinAps) recently used the ALS to gain greater insight into vanadium dioxide’s unusual phase transition. Read more »PPT-icon-35 PDF-icon-35

Marc Allaire, Beamline Scientist, BCSB

Marc Allaire, the newest member of the Berkeley Center for Structural Biology (BCSB) team, joined the ALS in October as beamline scientist for Sector 5, which consists of Beamlines 5.0.1, 5.0.2, and 5.0.3. Allaire came to the ALS from Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he had been responsible for macromolecular crystallography (MX) beamlines and the biological small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) program. Read more »

Minding the Gap Makes for More Efficient Solar Cells

Using novel materials to develop thin, flexible, and more efficient photovoltaic cells is one of the hottest topics in current materials research. A class of transition metals undergoes a dramatic change that makes them ideal for solar energy applications. Read more »

Crystal Nucleation and Near-Epitaxial Growth in Nacre

Nacre–the iridescent inner lining of many mollusk shells– has a unique strcuture that is remarkably resistant to fracture. The nacre featured on this cover is from Haliotis laevigata with average layer thickness 470-nm. The colors represent crystal orientationthe crystal lattice tilts across tablets.left stack all tablets are yellow, hence all aragonite crystals are co-oriented. Read more »

Students Get a Taste of ALS User Experience

A group of seventh graders from Black Pine Circle (BPC) school in Berkeley recently had a rare opportunity to experience the ALS as “users” via a scientific research proposal project and field trip. The students were led by science and technology teacher Christine Mytko, who spent the past summer at the ALS through the Industry Initiatives for Science and Math Education (IISME) program. Read more »

Senior Scientist Musa Ahmed

In his 19 years at the ALS, senior scientist Musa Ahmed has seen chemistry grow from a somewhat obscure synchrotron science focus area to a cornerstone, award-winning ALS program. Ahmed was recently charged with leading the chemical sciences program for both ALS chemical dynamics beamlines, 9.0.1 and 11.0.2, which befits his long-standing enthusiasm and leadership in advancing chemistry research at the ALS. Read more »

Greta Toncheva and Robert Fairchild, Laser Safety Officers

“Safety is elemental” is the latest safety tagline for the ALS and Berkeley Lab, and it also pretty much sums up the mission of laser safety officers Greta Toncheva and Robert Fairchild. Toncheva and Fairchild share the responsibility of ensuring laser safety lab-wide, with Toncheva responsible for overseeing laser safety operations at the ALS. Read more »