News

Shape memory alloys see use in numerous aerospace and biomedical applications, but their wider use is limited by functional fatigue. Understanding the micromechanical origins of functional fatigue will advance the development of new microstructures that mitigate these effects and lead to wider adoption in industry.

Congratulations to Chris Budrow for receiving his PhD from the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell.  Chris successfully defended his thesis on June 26th.  

Serial crystallography is a method for obtaining structural information on an atomic level of a protein, without the need for large protein crystals. Instead, small diffraction datasets are collected on many small protein crystals, which are usually easier to obtain than large ones. Serial crystallography is an ideal method for collecting diffraction data of proteins at room temperature, where the onset of radiation damage from the X-ray beam is rapid.

Congratulations to CHESS User, Professor Héctor Abruña, Cornell University, who was recently awarded the Frumkin Memorial Medal from the International Society of Electrochemistry, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field.

X-ray beam from the insertion device in Sector 4.

X-ray beam on the Sector 2B Side Bounce Diamonds, June 19, 2019.

As antibiotic resistance rises, the search for new antibiotic strategies has become imperative. In 2013, the Centers for Disease Control estimated that antibiotic resistant bacteria cause at least 2 million infections and 23,000 deaths a year in the U.S.; a recent report raised the likely mortality rate to 162,044.

There is growing interest in the biological research community to characterize and understand the impact of high pressures, i.e. 100s of MPa, on the physical properties and function of biological macromolecules, e.g. proteins, viruses, lipids etc.