Editorial

Dear readers,

Welcome to the Spring issue of Diamond News. 2009 has got off to a great start here at Diamond with new staff joining the institute, exciting science being carried out by a host of users from academia and industry, and a facility development programme that will see five new beamlines come online before the end of the year.

In this issue, we report on some of the highlights of the past six months including the appointment of Dr Martin Walsh, our new Life Sciences Coordinator, the wonderful reception that Diamond received when it took top UK scientists to present at the prestigious Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in February, and a status report on all the Phase II beamlines. The beamline update also includes the list of Phase III beamlines that the Science Advisory Committee (SAC) has approved for construction subject to the current detailed funding application being approved by the Government and The Wellcome Trust.

We are very grateful to all the staff and users that have assisted with content. Our aim is to try and cover the breadth of science that takes place at the facility. With this in mind, we are always on the look out for stories, so if you have results or topics that you would like to see featured in Diamond News, please do get in touch. We’ll then arrange a phone or face-to-face interview to gather all the facts, and put a draft article together for your approval. As they say, a good image is worth a thousand words, so we endeavour to get creative with our images too. Budding photographers or designers are very welcome to put image ideas forward to the Communications Team for future issues.

To get in touch, please e-mail silvana.damerell@diamond.ac.uk

We do hope you enjoy this issue and look forward to hearing from you!

Warm regards from the Communications Team