Every year, researchers perform thousands of materials science experiments at synchrotron facilities, seeking breakthroughs in alloy design, affordability, and mechanical performance. These advancements can accelerate growth in various fields from electronics and energy to aerospace and infrastructure.
Yet much of the valuable data produced in these experiments remains siloed—not for lack of intent, but because sharing it in a usable, standardized way remains a formidable challenge. Beamtime is limited. Materials systems are complex. And the combinations—different alloys, processing routes, and heat treatments—are nearly infinite.
For research to truly accelerate, the results of one experiment must become a foundation for the next. That’s the vision behind the Materials Genome Initiative and the FAIR data movement: a world where data and metadata are shared openly, documented clearly, and reused widely.
Turning that vision into reality requires more than goodwill. It takes infrastructure, planning, and a deep commitment to rigor—at every stage of the research process. That’s where CHESS and its user community are making a difference.
Magnesium Alloys and a Long-Term Collaboration
At the FAST beamline led by CHESS staff scientists Kate Shanks and Amlan Das, a research team from the University of Michigan is pushing forward a new model for conducting and curating beamline science. As part of a long-standing partnership with CHESS and the PRISMS Center (Predictive Integrated Structural Materials Science), the group is studying magnesium-yttrium alloys—materials that offer strong potential for lightweight automotive structures but suffer from poor formability.
“Magnesium is incredibly light, but notoriously difficult to form,” said Tracy Berman, Michigan researcher. “We’re trying to change that by tweaking its crystal structure—yttrium helps us do that.”
But improving these materials isn’t just about collecting good data, Berman explains, it’s about making that data useful to the entire materials community. “We want our work to be reproducible, shareable, and ultimately impactful beyond just our team,” Berman added
The project is led by Berman and supported by graduate students and postdocs working closely with CHESS scientists to combine experimental rigor with advanced simulation and data infrastructure.
Simulating Beamtime Before It Starts
To detect twinning—a subtle but critical deformation mechanism in magnesium and structural metals—the Michigan team started their experiment before ever stepping foot into CHESS. By using MechVDE (Mechanical Virtual Diffraction Experiment), a simulation tool developed by CHESS postdoctoral researcher Sven Gustafson that builds off of earlier work by Matt Miller, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and CHESS associate director, and Paul Dawson, the Joseph C. Ford Professor of Engineering Emeritus. With MechVDE, the team could run simulated diffraction experiments in a virtual beamline environment.
"MechVDE is designed for users to virtually conduct their diffraction experiment," Gustafson explained. "You place a virtual sample into a simulated beamline, collect synthetic detector data, and then use that to plan or refine your actual experiment."
From their home institution, Berman and team were able to simulate how their sample would respond to X-rays and how they could detect the subtle signals of tiny deformation twins. That kind of insight, which requires intentionally oversaturating the signal from the surrounding material, typically comes from trial and error at the beamline – or sometimes not at all.
And now, this can be uncovered in advance.
“What excites me most is that MechVDE helps researchers ask—and answer—questions they didn’t even know they should be asking,” said Sven Gustafson, developer of the tool. “It gives users a deeper intuition about how X-rays interact with their samples and beamline optics—insight that can take years to develop on your own.”
FAIR Data: From Lab Notebook to Public Resource
With new mandates pushing federally funded research toward FAIR data practices—Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable—the Michigan group is helping prototype what rigorous data stewardship can look like at a synchrotron.
CHESS’s metadata service, spearheaded by Valentin Kuznetsov, CLASSE scientist, is built directly into the FAST beamline infrastructure. It captures critical details like sample composition, processing history, and heat treatment – what Shanks calls “the kind of information you’d write in a lab notebook.” – and automatically logs them in a centralized database, permanently linked to the beamline dataset.
But sharing usable data is time-consuming. “Everyone agrees FAIR data is a good idea,” Shanks said, “but it’s incredibly time-intensive and often unfunded. The hardest part is making your data understandable to someone else.”
To help solve this, CHESS is working to connect its metadata system with external repositories like Materials Commons, allowing datasets to be more easily interpreted, reused, and cited by the broader community.
The payoff is more than just better data—it’s a cultural shift. “It’s science with a memory,” said Berman. “Not just a result, but a record—and a tool for others.”
Real-Time Decisions with Remote Dashboards
Users at the FAST beamline - and across CHESS - also benefit from CHESS’s investment in cyberinfrastructure. Using the NSDF (National Science Data Fabric) dashboards, collaborators can view experimental data in near real time through a web browser from anywhere in the world—no screen-sharing required.
“Before, if a PI was remote, a student [at CHESS] would hold up their phone to the beamline monitor and share information that way” Shanks recalled. “Now they can analyze the same plots at the same time using this interface.”
This capability is especially crucial during in-situ experiments, where materials are actively deformed during data collection. Researchers must continuously monitor signal quality and adjust strategy in real time.
Built on Collaboration
The Michigan team credits CHESS’s collaborative spirit as key to the project’s progress. From biweekly planning meetings to real-time beamline support, the partnership reflects a shared investment in doing science that’s not only excellent—but reproducible.
“CHESS has been incredibly supportive,” said Berman. “They’ve helped us think through not just the experiment, but how to build the infrastructure that makes this kind of science possible.”
With magnesium as a proving ground, the project offers a powerful example of what rigor can look like when built into every step of the research process.
The result is a model worth repeating—not just at CHESS, but at light sources everywhere.
The FAST Beamline is part of the Center for High-Energy X-ray Sciences at CHESS (CHEXS @ CHESS), funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, NSF.