Richard Gillilan, BioSAXS guru, assisted in running a workshop on small-angle scattering. He also co-chaired the session "Phase Separation and Aggregation of Biomolecular Systems and Intrinsically Disordered Proteins", and gave a talk in it about the use of multi-protein simulations and structure factor measurements. It was noteworthy that all the speakers at the session reported on work done at the CHESS BioSAXS station!
Marian Szebenyi, outgoing MacCHESS director, co-chaired a session on "Traversing the APS Dark Period"; at that session she described opportunities for structural biology research at CHESS during the APS down starting next year. She also presented a detailed picture of the status of high pressure macromolecular crystallography at station 7B2, in a session on "Home-Built Software and Hardware".
Steve Meisburger, starting as staff scientist for 7B2 on September 1, gave an outstanding talk on diffuse scattering as a tool to study macromolecular dynamics, in a session on "Macromolecular Structure Under Physiological Conditions".
A number of CHESS users also gave talks about their work at the facility.
Jeney Wierman, incoming MacCHESS director, fresh from chairing a Gordon Research Seminar on "Diffraction Methods in Structural Biology" and participating in a Gordon Research Conference on the same topic, attended the meeting and used the opportunity to make connections with colleagues from other synchrotron sources, as well as potential users.
The meeting covered a wide range of topics, from education to cryo-electron microscopy to a variety of X-ray techniques. Of particular interest were reports on the latest developments at other synchrotron sources, which provide inspiration for future developments at CHESS. Although some sessions were hybrid, this was primarily an in-person meeting - people were glad to get back together for the first time since 2019!