New location, same ALS spirit
This year’s Advanced Light Source (ALS) User Meeting—organized by the ALS Users’ Executive Committee’s Planning Members: Leonid Sheps, Francis Wei He, Joshua Del Mundo, Monsuru Ramoni, Shan Wu, Tamas Varga, and Whitney Loo, with support from the User Office—brought together over 200 participants in a new and energizing off-site setting at the DoubleTree Hotel at the Berkeley Marina.
The venue change fostered a different type of engagement. Away from the usual laboratory spaces, attendees found more time for informal conversations, networking, and community building. Many annual traditions remained, and the relaxed atmosphere encouraged the exchange of ideas across disciplines, creating momentum for collaborations that will shape the coming year.
Setting the stage
Carol Burns, deputy laboratory director for research at Berkeley Lab, opened the 2025 User Meeting with a keynote address that set the tone for the three-day event. She emphasized the central role of the ALS in the Lab’s success, outlined Berkeley Lab’s research priorities, highlighted advances in microelectronics and quantum science, and described how artificial intelligence is transforming the scientific landscape.
Her remarks underscored the complementary roles of the ALS: as a hub for discovery-driven user science and as an engine for national research priorities. This framing gave context to the meeting’s theme—how the ALS community continues to push scientific frontiers while preparing for the upgraded facility that will expand its capabilities.
Updates from ALS leadership
Following the keynote, Andreas Scholl, interim director and science deputy of the ALS, and Dimitri Argyriou, interim ALS-U project director and ALS director on leave, presented updates on progress from 2024—2025. Scholl highlighted major accomplishments, including the deposition of the 10,000th protein into the Protein Data Bank and the development of new “superfacility” capabilities. By integrating a computing pipeline through our high-performance computing center on-site, the ALS can now stream data in seconds from beamlines to computational resources, enabling faster analysis and discovery.
Argyriou shared his enthusiasm for the scientific opportunities that will be realized with the upgraded ALS. In particular, he highlighted research into orbital angular momentum, which will allow tailored beams to probe quantum materials with unprecedented precision. He also detailed the progress of the ALS-U project, noting the near completion of the accumulator ring and the ongoing detailed work during the current shutdown. His presentation conveyed both the scale of the rebuilding effort and the vision for the future. The audience engaged with thoughtful questions about coordination between the ALS and ALS-U project teams. Many were particularly interested in how the two groups are working together under the “One ALS” concept, ensuring alignment and adaptability in the face of potential schedule changes.
Plenary science talks expand horizons
The plenary session demonstrated the breadth of science enabled by synchrotron facilities worldwide, including the ALS. Andrzej Joachimiak, an Argonne distinguished fellow, presented “Advances in Structural Biology and Their Implications for Medicine and Materials,” highlighting how synchrotron techniques support breakthroughs across biosciences.
Yury Gogotsi, distinguished professor at Drexel University, followed with “The Promise and Challenges of MXenes—Why These Materials Are Exciting for the Future.” His talk emphasized the potential of MXenes in energy storage and electronic applications, while also addressing obstacles that must be overcome for practical deployment.
Tanja Bosak, professor of geobiology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, gave a lecture titled “How Microbes Leave Their Mark on Minerals, and What That Tells Us About Earth’s History.” She described how her lab uses x-ray data to study modern microbial processes shaping carbonate grains, structures, and elemental enrichments. By comparing these modern signatures with ancient carbonate deposits, her team has been able to distinguish between microbial and non-microbial processes. For instance, she presented results showing that arsenic enrichments in 2.7 billion-year-old deposits likely reflect hydrothermal inputs rather than microbial metabolism.
Together, these plenary talks highlighted the transformative role of synchrotron science in disciplines ranging from medicine to geobiology.
User Executive Commitee Awards
The Users’ Executive Committee (UEC) honored outstanding contributions with four awards.
Halbach Award: Greg Hura, science deputy of the Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging Division at Berkeley Lab, along with his team in the SIBYLS program, received the 2025 Halbach Award. Hura gave a talk on small-angle x-ray scattering and its impact on understanding cellular life and death. He also discussed recent innovations in detectors that mitigate radiation damage, potentially enabling new frontiers in structural biology.
Shirley Award: Martin Kunz, ALS senior scientist, Nobu Tamura, ALS senior scientist, and Simon Teat, staff scientist, received the Shirley Award and gave a presentation called “The X-Ray Files: Solving Cold Cases with X-Ray Diffraction.” Kunz and Tamura gave a talk that illustrated how x-ray diffraction has served as a detective tool to solve longstanding scientific mysteries, weaving together case studies that underscored the method’s versatility.
Early Career Award: Guiliang Xu, chemist in the Chemical Sciences and Engineering division at Argonne National Laboratory, was recognized for his pioneering research on lithium-ion batteries. His work addresses challenges in energy storage and sustainability, showing how synchrotron characterization tools accelerate progress in understanding battery performance and failure mechanisms.
Renner Award: Dula Parkinson, Photon Science Operations manager and Diffraction and Imaging program lead, received the prestigious Renner Award for his dedication to user success and support. Parkinson embodies this in his daily actions as well as his long-standing achievements in improving processes, including data collection, for users.
Poster slam spotlighted the next generation
The annual Poster Slam began with a spirited performance of “This Little Light of Mine,” bringing energy to the ballroom before the presentations. Thirteen participants presented their posters in 60 seconds each, representing a wide range of topics and techniques.
As the evening concluded, anticipation grew for the award announcements. The Neville Smith Student Poster Awards were presented to Sophie Hanson (UC Berkeley) for “Mapping Hemolymph Flow Channels in Scorpion Tails: Morphological Insights from High-Resolution X-Ray Imaging”, Jana Pilatova (Molecular Foundry) for “Microscopic algae as new emerging models for studies of organic biocrystallization and vision”, and Omolara Bakare (Virginia Tech) for “Spin-Orbital Conversion in Resonantly Excited Magnetization.”
First place winner Sophie Hanson, a UC Berkeley PhD candidate, studies how scorpions use hydraulics to power lightning-fast defensive strikes. While human-engineered hydraulics are well understood, biological systems remain mysterious. Hanson used Beamline 8.3.2 at the ALS to analyze the geometry of scorpion tail flow channels needed to visual the small channel that transports blood (or hemolymph) in their tail—a key part of the hydraulic mechanism.
The ALS’s microCT resolution proved essential for her research. “High-speed cameras showed me the output of whatever mechanism powered their movement, but I wanted to know the input—the parameters that govern that motion,” Hanson explained. “We needed this instrumentation to understand the diameter and size of the small channel to investigate how hydraulic pressure changes along the length of the tail.”
Hanson credited her success to collaborators at both the ALS and her lab, noting how the project pushed her toward 3D visualizations and illustrations that help others connect with her research visually. All three award-winning projects demonstrated the creativity and ingenuity driving new research at the ALS.
Exhibitors: The support behind the science
The exhibitor fair was lively and full of a variety of exhibitors who work together and support researchers across the world. The rapport was apparent and they talked about how they try to be collaborative, which resembles the Berkeley Lab ethos of team science that exhibitors and researchers share alike. The reception for the fair was made possible by Photothermal Spectroscopy Corp., UC Components, and VAT.
Huber Diffraction, a long-time exhibitor, marked its tenth year of supporting the meeting. Alan Hamill, expert scientist and owner of Huber Diffraction, remarked on the extraordinary growth of early career scientists he has witnessed throughout the years, noting that their passion continues to inspire his company’s commitment.
Huber manufactures stages that hold samples for the researchers to manipulate with high precision of a millionth of a meter. “The more and more the science advances, the more precision is needed to position that crystal or that sample in space to then be examined and that is paramount,” stated Hamill.
When Hamill retires, he plans to encourage the company and others to stay involved in the ALS User Meeting in the future, as he sees this collaboration across vendors and researchers to be key to scientific progress globally.
Workshops and tutorials dive deeper
Specialized workshops on the second and third days addressed emerging methods and applications.
During the beloved Light Sources 101 tutorial, Argyriou kicked off with a presentation that inspired new and existing users to explore the ways they can use the ALS. Mike Martin, lead of the ALS Photon Science Operations Group at the ALS, gave a comprehensive session explaining “what you can do with an x-ray,” which got many wheels turning in the audience.
Andi Jones, ALS proposal coordinator, led a session on proposal writing alongside two beamline scientists meant to empower users.
At the AI for Science workshop, Thorsten Hellert of the ALS Accelerator Physics Group presented an open-source, domain-agnostic architecture for building intelligent agents that can be adapted to different domains. He is now integrating this agentic AI framework into the ALS Beamline in a Box (BOLT), in collaboration with the Photon Science Computing Group. BOLT, a collaboration with Diamond Light Source and the ALS Photon Science Computing and Beamline Controls Program, is a device with real motors and detectors that fits on a table. It can be used to test computing and controls code without interrupting beamline operation. Testing agentic frameworks in this context demonstrates how AI will drive the future of synchrotron science. This was demonstrated across this workshop and others.
Examples included studying drought responses in plants and courtship behaviors in spiders. A highlight of the session was a virtual reality demonstration led by Laura Lynn Gonzalez of 10K Science, where participants explored volumetric datasets in immersive detail.
A recurring theme across workshops was the accelerating role of machine learning in segmenting and analyzing complex datasets, a trend that is redefining experimental workflows across disciplines.
Reflections
As the meeting concluded, Whitney Loo, chair of the ALS Users’ Executive Committee, reflected on the event:
“It was great to get the ALS community together at a beautiful off-site venue to learn about some of the amazing science being enabled by the ALS from leading researchers. I hope users gained an appreciation for new ALS capabilities that are outside of their expertise and were able to connect with new community members. We are deeply grateful to the ALS User Office for their hard work in making this event possible.”
With its blend of scientific updates, award recognitions, workshops, and community-building moments, the 2025 User Meeting exemplified the ALS spirit. The new venue may have provided a different backdrop, but the sense of shared purpose and excitement for discovery remained unchanged.
