Participants from 23 institutions and companies joined the meeting in person on the Cornell campus and online via YouTube live.
The morning sessions provided Users with technical and logistics updates surrounding our CHESS-U upgrade project. After an introduction to the meeting by User Executive Committee chair Kyle Lancaster (Cornell), Ernie Fontes (Associate Director, CHESS) gave an overview of the many changes taking place at CHESS over the next year. Jim Shanks (staff scientist) described specific upcoming changes to the accelerator, and Sasha Temnykh (staff scientist) discussed past and ongoing insertion device technology research. In the last talk of the first session, Marian Szebenyi (Director, MacCHESS) gave an update on the accomplishments of MacCHESS over the past year.
The second session was opened with the announcement of the Student Paper Prize Winner; congratulations to Bastien Casu from the University of Montreal, who described his exemplary work on x-ray crystallographic structural characterization of TraE, a homolog for VirB8, which is a critical component in many bacterial macromolecular transport processes. Darren Pagan (staff scientist) described the research efforts and accomplishments of the InSitμ program over the past year, including an update on our CHESS-U protoype hutch 1A3. Lora Gruber-Hine (Director, Education and Outreach) discussed our past and future outstanding programs for engaging students in scientific research and technical projects. Guebre Tessema (Program Director, NSF) joined the meeting through a video conference to voice NSF’s support through the current award, and acknowledge the pending CHEXS proposal.
After lunch, the meeting reconvened for five research talks. Matthew Krogstad (Northern Illinois University and Argonne National Laboratory) kicked off the first session with a talk on single crystal diffuse scattering signatures of relaxor characteristics in the lead magnesium niobate-lead titanate system. Next, Olivier Paré-Labrosse (University of Toronto, Dwayne Miller group) described the collaborative efforts at CHESS to develop high throughput oscillation serial crystallography. In the last talk of the third session, Olena Vatamaniuk (Cornell) discussed applications of scanning x-ray fluorescence for the study of metal ion homeostasis in model plants and globally relevant crops.
In the final session of the meeting, Aram Amassian (KAUST) contributed a visionary description of future ink-based semiconductor device manufacturing, including the key role of x-ray analysis in developing these processes. Finally, Katsuhiko Murakami (Penn State) described his group’s approach to time-resolved RNA transcription research. To close the session, the results of the User Executive Committee election were announced: thanks and congratulations to John Twilley (SUNY Stony Brook University) and Andrej Singer (Cornell) who will serve for two years, beginning in 2019. The 2019 chair and vice chair of the User Executive Committee will be John Smedley (Brookhaven National Lab) and Todd Hufnagel (Johns Hopkins University, Whiting School of Engineering). We are grateful to all our UEC members for their thoughtful support! The afternoon science sessions were followed by a poster session. A tour on the CHESS experimental floor concluded the afternoon’s activities, and included visits to the new hutch 1A3, the magnet girder assembly area in L0E, and a discussion of the CBETA project.
The evening reception and dinner were held at the Statler Hotel. Joel Brock (Director, CHESS) addressed the meeting after dinner and thanked all the participants. Poster awards, with a $100 cash prize generously provided by Advanced Design Consulting USA, Inc. (ADC), were presented to Peter Beaucage, for scientific achievement, and to Howie Joress, for technical achievement. The evening’s program concluded with an engaging presentation by Charles Eldermire (Lab of Ornithology) on the bird camera project and discoveries enabled by their big data approach to bird observation.
Many thanks to those who made the day a success! I would like to express my gratitude to our speakers, session chairs, tour guides, and poster judges, who filled the day with fascinating science, to our communications, IT group, and audiovisual support, for making sure we could be seen and heard, both in person and on YouTube Live, and to our fabulous User Office for handling the endless logistical details. Special recognition goes to ADC, who not only sponsored both of the poster prizes, but the wine served at the dinner as well. And finally, thanks to you, our User Community, for all your enthusiasm and support in this time of transition!
If you missed the meeting, or want to revisit one of the talks, you can find the recording online here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-70ax38Svo
Louisa Smieska
Users' Meeting 2018 Organizer
CHESS Staff Scientist
