Chi-Chang's Corner

Annual Users' Meeting, Funding Opportunities Highlight Importance of Energy Research

June 6, 2008

Chi-Chang Kao
NSLS Department Chair
kao@bnl.gov

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The annual NSLS-Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) Joint Users’ Meeting was, once again, a success. The May meeting, which was based around the theme “Lighting our Way to a Renewable/Sustainable Energy Future,” attracted about 400 participants from around the world, in addition to almost 40 vendors from synchrotron- and nanoscience-related fields. I’m glad I had the opportunity to meet and catch up with many of you during the various sessions. Congratulations to the new members of the Users’ Executive Committee (UEC) and Special Interest Groups as well as the winners of the Community Service Award and Julian Baumert Ph.D. Thesis Award. I’d like to thank everyone who helped organize the main meeting, workshops, exhibits, and poster session.

Representatives from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently visited the NSLS to review and critique our procedures for managing the risks presented by experiments that involve nanomaterials. Because of the uncertainty surrounding the potential health effects of nanoscale materials, BNL has taken a conservative approach toward working with free nanoscale particulates. The auditors were pleased that the NSLS and the other BNL departments reviewed were taking precautions that are thoughtful and well implemented. The findings from Brookhaven’s assessment, along with those from nine other national labs, will be available in late summer. You can read more about the review here.

DOE’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences recently released a Funding Opportunity Announcement for the Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC), a new initiative to bring together the skills and talents of multiple investigators in order to help meet the global need for abundant, clean, and economical energy. The awards are expected to be in the $2–5 million range annually for an initial 5-year period, and it is anticipated that about $100 million will be available starting next year. This funding initiative provides an opportunity to partner with the NSLS in developing the advanced synchrotron-based instrumentation required to characterize the structure of novel materials or device assemblies. Please contact Ron Pindak if you are interested in a possible partnership with the NSLS.

After a month of extensive work involving installations, upgrades, and maintenance during the spring shutdown, the entire accelerator complex was brought back online ahead of schedule. Major activities during the shutdown included: replacement of klystron 1 in the linac; improvements to the booster vacuum system; connection of the X9 front-end to the X-Ray Ring vacuum chamber; continuation of tasks involving ongoing Electrical Equipment Inspection activities; and improvements to the pulsed magnet (kicker) system in the Booster Ring. Thanks to everyone involved for your hard work.

With input from the NSLS Scientific Strategic Planning workshops and the Beamline Transfer Working Group, we’ll soon start to revise the NSLS Five-Year Plan. The plan will serve as a guide for developing new projects at the NSLS and for transitioning to NSLS-II. We will present the updated plan to the Scientific Advisory Committee in the fall.

I’d like to congratulate NSLS user David Sayre (Stony Brook University), who is the recipient of the 2008 Ewald Prize for his many contributions to the field of x-ray crystallography, in particular, his seminal contribution to solving the phase problem for imaging non-periodic objects. Given every three years by the International Union of Crystallography, the Ewald Prize is one of the most prestigious awards in the field.

Finally, a team of scientists from Brookhaven and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases have taken the first step toward designing an effective antidote to the most potent form of Botulinum neurotoxin. Using NSLS beamline X29, the scientists discovered that they can trick the toxin to bypass its normal binding protein, thereby blocking its deadly action. You can read more about their research in this issue of eNews.