To hear Xianbo Shi tell it, there is no substitute for on-the-job training in the field of X-ray optics. There is no particular educational track, he says, that will teach you how to design the complex series of synchrotron beamline optics (mirrors, lenses, monochromators, etc.) that manipulate powerful X-ray beams for scientific purposes. If you want to learn, you have to put down the books and go work at an X-ray facility.

As part of the recent APS/CNM Users Meeting, the APS Upgrade project hosted a question-and-answer session to address user questions about the timing and scope of the upgrade, and the benefits of the new storage ring and beamlines. Chief Project Officer Jim Kerby was joined by Jonathan Lang, X-ray Science Division Director, and Susan White De Pace, manager of the APS user programs. A document of frequently asked questions, including those asked at the Q&A session, has been compiled.

From Fox 32 News Chicago: Happy Birthday to a local lab that has been helping solve the world's problems for decades! Argonne National Laboratory is turning 75. Technology at the Lemont lab helps scientists at Argonne National Laboratory see tiny things to make huge discoveries. "The smaller the thing that you look at, the bigger the facility, so the APS is huge. You can fit Wrigley Field in the center of our electronic storage ring," said Stephen Streiffer, the Deputy Laboratory Director for Science and Technology.

Jan Ilavsky, physicist and beamline scientist with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source, has been named a Fellow of the American Crystallographic Association. Ilavsky is one of seven scientists named to the ACA Fellows class of 2021.

Work by Richard Prum (Yale University), Vinod Saranathan of Yale-NUS College at the National University of Singapore, and others in recent years has made progress on understanding how some birds produce the structural colors behind their brilliant blue plumage: a process of phase separation.

Scientists are preparing for a possible next coronavirus pandemic to strike. In future-looking research, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine scientists have identified a novel target for a drug to treat SARS-CoV-2 that also could impact a new emerging coronavirus. The study provides critical information that could aid drug development against future coronaviruses as well as SARS-CoV-2. Data was collected at the Life Sciences Collaborative Access Team at the Advanced Photon Source.

Shelly Kelly is assuming leadership of the X-ray Science Division Spectroscopy Group.

Could new treatments for hospitalized COVID-19 patients emerge from San Antonio? Scientists at four local [San Antonio] research institutions have laid the groundwork for such discoveries with a study [carried out at the APS] that showed how coronaviruses such as SARS-CoV-2 can hide in the body and circumvent our immune defenses.

Si Chen, a physicist with the X-ray Science Division Microscopy Group at Argonne National Laboratory’s Advanced Photon Source, is one of six Argonne researchers who have received FY 2021 U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Research Program awards.

The APS Upgrade Project includes the construction of nine new feature beamlines with world-leading capabilities, and Dana Capatina is one of the lead engineers designing them. Her job is to develop safe, versatile delivery systems for x-ray beams, so that scientists coming to the APS to conduct research can make the best use of them.

Randall (Randy) E. Winans has been named the winner of the American Chemical Society’s 2020 R. A. Glenn Award presented for the most innovative and interesting paper presented at each ACS national meeting in the Energy and Fuels Division.

The APS User Organization Steering Committee is happy to announce the four new steering committee members along with the new student member! All five were nominated and elected by the APS user community.

The only way to really learn what happens at the extremes is to go to the extremes. For adventuresome types, such as extreme athletes and explorers, that means scaling forbidding mountains, diving to unimaginable ocean depths, or pushing vehicles to ever greater speeds, at great expense and even greater danger… "If you want the most extreme thermophysical conditions in the laboratory, the only game in town is shockwave compression," says Washington State University condensed matter physicist Yogendra Gupta, principal investigator at the Dynamic Compression Sector of the Advanced Photon Source…

The 2021 "Gopal K. Shenoy Award for Excellence in Beamline Science at the Advanced Photon Source" (APS) has been awarded to Jiyong Zhao, a physicist in the X-ray Science Division Inelastic X-ray and Nuclear Resonant Scattering Group at the U.S. Department of Energy’s APS at Argonne National Laboratory.

Tim Graber, who spent his entire professional career at Argonne, most recently with the Advanced Photon Source Upgrade Project, passed away on Thursday, April 29, 2021.

Exploring and manipulating the behavior of polar vortices in material may lead to new technology for faster data transfer and storage. Researchers used the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne and the Linac Coherent Light Source at SLAC to learn more.

Scott Williams, deputy chief of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Genome Integrity and Structural Biology Laboratory, received the Southeast Regional Collaborative Access Team Outstanding Science Award.

Glenn Decker started his career at Argonne National Laboratory in May of 1990. One month later, the lab broke ground on the construction of the Advanced Photon Source (APS), which would become a DOE Office of Science User Facility at Argonne offering X-ray science resources to more than 5,500 scientists each year. As a member of the APS team, Decker got to help bring the original APS to life.

Researchers using the APS to examine the atomic structure of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, have made a landmark discovery that could contribute critical information to the design of safe and effective antiviral drugs in the fight against the virus.

The Advanced Photon Source will be holding an online workshop on “Capabilities and Opportunities at the APS Coherent High-Energy X-ray (CHEX) Sector” from 8:45 A.M. to 12:00 noon CDT on Friday, April 30, 2021. This workshop will consist of several invited talks that will provide an overview of the APS Upgrade, describe the design and characteristics of the CHEX Sector, and provide several examples of the types of science that it is envisioned will be enabled at CHEX. This workshop will consist of several invited talks that will provide an overview of the APS Upgrade, describe the design and characteristics of the CHEX Sector, and provide several examples of the types of science that it is envisioned will be enabled at CHEX.