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This October, the new user facilities at the Cornell High-Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) will open their doors to researchers. This opening follows a major upgrade project, known as CHESS-U, which establishes CHESS as one of the world’s leading X-ray sources.

Last month, Linda Sapochack, NSF Division Director for the Division of Materials Research (DMR), Clark Cooper, Senior Advisor for Science and Head of the Office of Multidisciplinary Activities in the NSF Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and NSF Program Director Guebre X. Tessema visited CHESS to see the newly upgraded facility.

A single human cell contains thousands of proteins that perform a vast array of functions, from fighting off viruses to transcribing DNA. By understanding the structure of these proteins, researchers can interpret their functions and develop methods for turning them on and off.

"By understanding how an essential enzyme is inactivated in an organism-specific manner, the researchers hope to contribute to the development of new anti-pathogenetic therapies."

Christopher Flynn, a fourth year student majoring in Physics and Mathematics at Fort Lewis College, and a SUnRiSE student at Cornell this summer, is contributing to the design of microfluidic mixing chips which could significantly enhance our understanding of proteins and living cells.

In an era when our most detailed pictures of biomolecules come from frozen or crystalline samples, biological small angle X-ray solution scattering (BioSAXS) is more essential than ever as a tool for learning how molecules actually behave under realistic biological conditions in the liquid state.

The annual CHESS Users’ Meeting was held this year on Tuesday, May 15, 2018, earlier than usual due to our upgrade project, CHESS-U, starting this June.

Parallel to the CHESS-U project performing necessary equipment upgrades here at Wilson Lab, the CHESS website was also in the shop for a makeover.