The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to continue to impact the ability of users to travel to CHESS for experiments. Therefore, we have developed remote and mail-in capabilities at all CHESS beamlines.
On June 30th, Cornell University President Martha E. Pollack announced that Cornell plans to welcome undergraduate students back to its Ithaca campus for fall semester combining in-person and on-line instruction, emphasizing that this decision best serves public health. In order to minimize transmission, Cornell University is strongly discouraging and significantly restricting visits to campus by individuals not part of the residential Cornell community, at least through the fall semester. Therefore, out-of-town users will not be allowed to visit CHESS during the September to November experimental run. Out-of-town users will be supported via remote and mail-in capabilities. A limited number of challenging experiments will be supported in “joint venture mode”:
Joint venture mode: User groups working from their home institutions and CHESS scientists working at the beamline plan and execute experiments in close collaboration.
Mail-in mode: User groups send samples to CHESS and CHESS scientists collect data based on the experimental plan provided by the user group.
Remote mode: User groups send samples to CHESS and perform the experiments remotely from their home institution by logging on to the CHESS station computer.
When allocating beamtime for the upcoming run, we will carefully take into account the feasibility of the proposed experiments to ensure that we continue to do exceptional science under the current circumstances, train students in synchrotron methods, and develop new and unique experimental capabilities.
We will provide updates on CHESS operations and solicit your feedback under what we expect to be changing pandemic conditions. Please be aware that deteriorating conditions may force Cornell to modify its reopening strategy in the coming weeks and as the semester progresses.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to us, to the CHESS scientists, or to the CHESS user office if you have questions or comments.