APS User News-at-a-Glance
Issue 10; November 2, 2001

Contents:

1.

J. Murray Gibson to Lead the APS

Eleventh Users Meeting Highlights Science and Students

Independent Investigator Proposals Due November 15

Six Elected to APS Users Organization Steering Committee

User Survey Results

Operations Update

1.

J. Murray Gibson to Lead the APS
(Contact: strasser@aps.anl.gov)

J. Murray Gibson is the new Associate Laboratory Director (ALD) for the APS. His appointment, which was announced to the APS user community at the opening session of the Eleventh Users Meeting, became effective on October 22, 2001. Until his appointment as ALD, Murray was the Director of the Materials Science Division (MSD) at Argonne. In this role, he worked to strengthen existing programs, and add new areas. In particular, he oversaw Argonne's early efforts in nanoscience and fostered the development of the Nano-CAT proposal, which was approved by the APS Program Evaluation Board in the spring of 2001 and is expected to funded by the Department of Energy in FY 200Murray Gibson received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Cambridge in 1978. Following two years as a postdoctoral fellow with IBM Yorktown Heights, he joined the staff in the Physics Division of Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, where he became head of the Electronics and Photonics Materials Research Department. In 1991, he moved to the University of Illinois of Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) as a professor of physics and of materials science and engineering. In 1994, he became Associate Director of the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory at UIUC, then came to Argonne in 1998 as head of MSD. These diverse experiences give him a broad perspective on the scientific user community.

Murray has published more than 160 papers in refereed journals and given more than 120 invited presentations. His work, particularly on the use of electron diffraction to study thin films and interfaces, has attracted international recognition. His current research involves coherent diffraction studies of fluctuations in amorphous materials. He holds seven patents, and has received the Burton Medal of the Microscopy Society of America, and the Distinguished Lecturer Award of the American Vacuum Society. He is a Fellow of both the American Physical Society and the Royal Microscopical Society, and has been a Councilor of the Materials Research Society, a Councilor of the Microscopy Society of America, and Chair of the Materials Physics Division of the American Physical Society. He is currently a member of the National Research Council's Solid-State Sciences Committee.

In this first message to the user community, Murray writes:

It is my great pleasure to join the Advanced Photon Source (APS) family as Associate Laboratory Director. The APS is an outstanding facility and a dynamic partnership between its users and staff.

We can all be justifiably proud of the machine performance and the continued dedication of the APS staff to improving reliability. In FY 2001, the facility achieved 95.8% availability for 5,000 hours of user-beam time. You clearly made the most of that beam time: 1,989 users came here at least once to carry out experiments, a number that is growing at a rate of almost 400 per year. The scientific output from those experiments is very impressive and growing by leaps and bounds. For those of you who were unable to attend the 11th Annual Users Meeting held October 9-11, let me report that it was an superb display of great science and engineering.

The APS is entering an exciting phase in which research output will blossom. As Associate Laboratory Director, I am keen to meet as many of you as I can, and to listen to your concerns and ideas as to how we can together bring this facility to the next level.

From my perspective, this is a great job. I am privileged to build on the achievements of outstanding scientists&emdash;David Moncton, Gopal Shenoy, Yanglai Cho, John Galayda, and many others. We are assured that the APS will continue this tradition of success, but we are challenged to strive for the highest possible level of scientific impact. I am thrilled by the science that is yet to come, and I look forward to working with you to our mutual benefit as partners in this great enterprise.

Eleventh Users Meeting Highlights Science and Students
(contact: vanni@aps.anl.gov)

The Eleventh Users Meeting for the APS, held October 9 -11, 2001, offered numerous opportunities for users to share results of the prolific science being done at the APS. Six workshops were held on topics that included nanoscience, structural biology, environmental science, small-angle x-ray scattering, instrumentation, and APS l01 (an overview of the types of experiments conducted here). The invited speakers for the User Science Session gave meeting attendees an in-depth look at cutting-edge results from research at the APS. On a broader scale, the APS user community contributed to a record-setting poster session by submitting nearly 140 posters!

The fifth APS Arthur H. Compton Award was given to Prof. Wayne Hendrickson (Columbia University) for his contributions to the development of multiwavelength anomalous diffraction (MAD) as a synchrotron radiation tool for structural biology. The dramatic increase in the number of published structures solved by the MAD method since its development is a testament to the impact of Hendrickson's work. Further information about the Compton Award (including a list of past awardees) can be found at http://www.aps.anl.gov/apsuo/compton.html.

Students, an important segment of the APS user population, also provided a scientific presence at the meeting. Three students were recognized in the traditional student poster competition for the quality of their work: Matthew DeCamp, University of Michigan; Martin Holt, University of Illinois; and Wenyi Cai, a high school student from Naperville (Illinois) Central High School. Special recognition was accorded to Achintya Madduri, currently a freshman at Rice University. As a high-school student, Achintya carried out data evaluation on work conducted at the APS that resulted in a Physical Review Letters publication (Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 13, September, pp 135504-1 - 135504-4, 2001)!

A short album of photos from various events at the Eleventh Users Meeting can be viewed at http://www.aps.anl.gov/conferences/11um/scrapbook.html.

Independent Investigator Proposals Due November 15
(Contact: strasser@aps.anl.gov)

The due date for Independent Investigator (II) proposals for the second run of FY 2002, which begins January 23, 2002, has been extended to November 15, 2001. At present, nine Collaborative Access Teams (19 beamlines) are accepting proposals. Further information about the APS II program, as well as a link to the Web-based submission form, can be found at http://www.aps.anl.gov/ii. Questions can be directed to Susan Strasser (strasser@aps.anl.gov).

4.

Six Elected to APS Users Organization Steering Committee
(Contact: strasser@aps.anl.gov)

The first Web-based election for the APS Users Organization Steering Committee resulted in the selection of six individuals for three-year terms, which began on October 11, 2001. The new members are Lin Chen, David Cookson, Stephen Durbin, Lisa Keefe, John Rose, and Sunil Sinha. Biographies and photographs of each of these individuals, as well as of continuing Steering Committee members, are located at http://www.aps.anl.gov/apsuo/members/apsuosc.html.

Meetings of the Steering Committee are open to all interested users. The next one will be held on January 17, 2002, at the APS. Information about the meeting can be obtained by contacting Paul Zschack, APSUO Chair (zschack@aps.anl.gov) or Susan Strasser, APS liaison to the APSUO (strasser@aps.anl.gov).

5.

APS User Survey Results
(Contact: dmm@aps.anl.gov)

In the second survey of APS Users conducted during late summer of 2001 (the first was conducted in May 2000 with results found at http://www.aps.anl.gov/upd/usersurvey/), more than 98% of the respondents were either satisfied or very satisfied with top-up mode and support from CAT beamline staff. Approximately 200 responses and 485 comments were received. The results are being analyzed now, and survey results will soon be posted on the Web.

6.

Operations Update
(Contact: avr@aps.anl.gov)

The APS has just completed a record setting year, with several significant accomplishments. The APS delivered 4789 hours of beam to the users out of a scheduled 5000 hours, for an availability of 95.8%. This was the first year since the start of operation that the availability for the year exceeded our goal of 95%. In fact, each of the four runs during the year exceeded the 95% goal.

This was also a year where a significant portion (25%) of the user beamtime was in the top-up mode. The requirement of injecting a single shot into the storage ring every two minutes instead of an injection cycle every 12 hours placed an increased reliability demand on the injector systems. But the injector performed remarkably well, with an overall annual availability over 95% during top-up. In fact, during the last two runs, the injector availability exceeded 97%. Top-up is scheduled for 75% of user beamtime in the current fiscal year.

A week of user beam time was also provided in the low-emittance mode, with the horizontal emittance reduced from 7 nm-rad to 3 nm-rad. The reduced source size and divergence normally come at a price of reduced lifetime, but because low-emittance operation was coupled with top-up, the users experienced only the benefits, without the drawbacks, of this operating mode. The positive experience during the period has reaffirmed the decision to operate in the low-emittance mode during all of the scheduled top-up operation for the current fiscal year.

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