From the Director

It has been a very busy and exciting year since the 2018 summer shutdown at CHESS! With the CHESS upgrade, CHESS-U, nearing completion and the first commissioning phase of storage ring and beamlines successfully completed, we are now putting the finishing touches on our new instruments during the current 2019 summer shut down in order to be ready for user operation in October.

In the next few months, we plan to highlight many of the new capabilities at CHESS in this newsletter and on our website. Please stay tuned! As a first example we showcase room temperature crystallography at our FlexX beamline . Keeping proteins at room temperature when determining their structure will provide crucial new information for the structural biology community.

The first call for general user proposals since the upgrade closed in early July and beamtime proposals are currently being reviewed for their scientific merit, technical feasibility and safety. Researchers will be informed about the outcome of the review process and beamtime allocations in early August.

As every summer, the lab is humming with activities by our summer students performing research at CHESS and experiencing life “behind the shielding wall”. It is always exciting to consider what these students might pursue after experiencing a summer at our lab. 

CHESS graduate student, Christopher Budrow , has just received his Ph.D. from the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell. During his time with us, Chris has been strengthening our relationship with industry and developing new techniques for high-energy X-ray diffraction to measure residual stress in novel materials. Congratulations Chris!

As we continue our educational and scientific efforts, we look forward to CHESS users coming back to a brand new facility with a staff eager to show it off and all of us jointly pushing science to new limits!
 
Joel Brock, Director
It was only April 8 when the CESR team had successfully stored positrons at 50mA. On July 1, beam was introduced to all of the sectors that will have users in September. Excellent design, precise surveying, and careful installation all contribute to the quick success of receiving light at the hutches after CHESS-U construction.
 
Controlling Lithium Dendrite Growth: An Operando X-ray Study: Li metal has long been considered the ideal anode material for Li rechargeable batteries. In this study, researchers employed synchrotron-based X-ray imaging methods at CHESS to image the evolution of Li plating/stripping on the Li metal anode under operando and practical conditions for battery operation.
Room Temperature Serial Crystallography: Serial crystallography is a method for obtaining structural information on an atomic level of a protein, without the need for large protein crystals. Instead, small diffraction datasets are collected on many small protein crystals, which are usually easier to obtain than large ones. Serial crystallography is an ideal method for collecting diffraction data of proteins at room temperature, where the onset of radiation damage from the X-ray beam is rapid.
In-Situ Observations of Performance Evolution in Shape Memory Alloys: Shape memory alloys see use in numerous aerospace and biomedical applications, but their wider use is limited by functional fatigue. Understanding the micromechanical origins of functional fatigue will advance the development of new microstructures that mitigate these effects and lead to wider adoption in industry.
2019 Summer Students at CHESS: As we reach the height of the summer, a group of students have been pursuing their own academic inquiries.
Congratulations, CHESS User, Professor Héctor Abruña! CHESS User, Professor Héctor Abruña, Cornell University, was recently awarded the Frumkin Memorial Medal from the International Society of Electrochemistry, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field.
Congratulations Chris Budrow, PhD! Congratulations to Chris Budrow for receiving his PhD from the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell. Chris successfully defended his thesis on June 26th. 
Issue No. 62 • 2019.7.15
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