From the Director
Dear CHESS Community,
 
At Cornell, the fall semester began last month with fully in-person instruction. While it is always exciting to see campus come back to life with students returning to Ithaca, this year was special.  The hope is that we’ve turned the corner on Covid-19.  We’re still being very careful but most activities are resuming.
 
It has been quite a summer at CHESS, construction crews have been working around the clock to complete the heavy concrete shielding walls of the New Experimental Hall and to rebury the CESR tunnel. (link to camera) These construction tasks will restore the radiation shielding required to enable our crews to begin commissioning and testing CESR and then the CHESS beamlines. We’ve made significant modifications to CESR both to support HMF and to improve operations for CHESS. All this needs to be finished before user operations begin on November 2nd.  We are excited to return to the sounds of CESR operations and a reprieve from the heavy construction at Wilson Lab. 
 
In preparation for the upcoming run we will hold an online CHESS Town Hall on Wednesday, October 19th at 11am (EDT).   Please stay tuned for more details as we aim to keep CHESS users up-to-date with CHESS beamline activities. 
 
We are also preparing for the Winter Run, which begins on January 25th, 2023. Please check out the important dates for the call for proposals and beam time requests.    
 
This newsletter highlights a publication featured in Science based on x-ray data collected over many years at CHESS. In Nanocrystals with metastable high-pressure phases under ambient conditions, scientists discovered an approach, which combined nanocrystal-based designer solids with controlled pressure processing, achieving 100% retainment of high-pressure formed metastable phases under room environments. 
 
We also highlight the super CHESS Compact Undulator (sCCU).  Invented and developed here, the sCCU utilizes hydraulic technology similar to that in power steering to create a variable gap undulator with higher peak fields than our current CCUs.  The sCCU will provide X-rays for the new HMF beamline and eventually replace existing CCUs.
 
I look forward to welcoming our CHESS users back into the lab! Hope to see you soon,
 
Joel Brock, Director, CHESS (email Joel)
Welcome Steve Meisburger
Steve Meisburger joins CHESS as a staff Scientist at the FlexX beamline. While Steve is interested in diffuse scattering, he’s also interested in using time-resolved techniques to include more types of perturbations, such as temperature, pressure, and electric fields. Welcome Steve!
Nanocrystals with metastable high-pressure phases under ambient conditions
This groundbreaking work was supported by a collaboration between the PI an collaborators and CHEXS scientist Zhongwu Wang, spanning many years, across the former CHESS “B-line” beamline and the new CHEXS HPBio facilities.
Super Cornell Compact Undulator (sCCU) Compact Variable-Gap Undulator with hydraulic-assist driver and enhanced magnetic field
A team at CHESS in collaboration with PHAD has developed, prototyped, built, and tested a compact variable-gap undulator with hydraulic-assist driver and innovative hybrid magnetic structure.
CHEXS Lending Library offers valuable teaching resource
As students return to school, we'd like to remind teachers looking for fun and engaging STEM activities that kits are available through our Lending Library. The CHEXS Lending Library program serves as a repository for valuable science resources for middle school (grades 5-8) and high school (grades 9-12) teachers.
Energy center receives $12.6 million in renewed funding
Cornell’s Center for Alkaline-Based Energy Solutions (CABES) has received renewal funding of $12.6 million for a four-year period to continue its work developing advanced fuel cell technologies in alkaline media.
Frontiers in Archaeological Sciences 3: Rethinking the Paradigm
CHESS is a co-sponsor of this upcoming conference planned and hosted by the Archaeological Science Group, the Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Materials Studies (CIAMS) Anti-Racism and Anti-Colonialism Interest Group, and CIAMS at Cornell's Ithaca campus. See below for registration and more information.
Save the date: User Town Hall

Join us for our next Users Town Hall on October 19th at 11am EDT
Issue No. 99 2022.9.16