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As we move into autumn, and the crunch of seed-pods underfoot brings with it our first steps towards winter, the research coming out of Diamond continues apace. As reported in our spring edition, growth and new beginnings continue to be the watchwords for 2014, and will permeate into 2015 as we develop our plans for Diamond’s future in terms of research, collaborations, technology, and personnel. Hibernation is not on the cards.
With his feet now firmly under the table since his arrival in January, our CEO Professor Andrew Harrison is now well underway with consolidating plans for Diamond’s future development beyond the final stages of Phase III construction, and our interview with Andrew outlines the board’s approach to planning for the long-term future of Diamond.
What could prove to be a key moment in enabling us to reach our developmental goals is the appointment of our new Chairman, Professor Sir Adrian Smith. A fuller picture of the breadth and depth of his influential experience in scientific research and policy is given in the first article of this issue, but suffice to say we atre both excited and honoured in equal measure to have Sir Adrian on board.
Following the theme of looking to the future, we bring news of the latest developments on our electron microscopy facility, which will also house the new Nanoprobe beamline I14. We also report on our burgeoning role in the European XFEL project, with the creation of a UK base here at Diamond, giving scientists the capacity to make full use of their experimental time at the Hamburg facility.
This autumn, we have a feature article that sheds light on two groups who do a lot of work here behind the scenes. The Optics and Metrology Group and the Detector Group have been focusing their expertise on different stages of the beam’s journey since before the first steel girder was put in place, and we’re very pleased to be able to illuminate a little about their respective roles at Diamond.
As ever, we have our Phase III updates, reporting on three beamlines at different stages of development. In greater detail, we bring you coverage of I08’s first users, and exciting research in angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy research coming out of I05 on 2D atom sheets.
In addition to the Phase III stories, we feature some of Diamond’s research highlights this autumn. We have some new evidence of how biochemical processes can be investigated in live cells using FTIR spectro-microscopy on the MIRIAM beamline (B22), there’s the data from JEEP beamline (I12) supporting the use of high-temperature superconductors, and the novel beamline setup on the Test Beamline (B16) that can investigate the liquid to glass transition.
We’re lucky in this issue to be able to hear the experiences of a recent starter, Beam Diagnostics Physicist Lorraine Bobb. We also give summaries of the monthly supplier exhibitions, and the big science workshops of 2014, including the SRUM.
We finish with a look into some of our education and engagement work. The Inside Diamond open day for the public is always a winner, due to the brilliant input from individuals across all areas at Diamond and a growing band of enthusiastic user groups keen to highlight their research to our visitors. Wrapping up, we feature this year’s cohort of keen and incredibly smart summer placement students. They brought a buzz around the place, and we’re very much looking forward to announcing the winners of their Science Communicators Awards in due course.
So as the nights start to draw in, we hope you enjoy this round up of our news and events. As ever we welcome your comments on how we can better serve our user community, and if you have any research you feel could be highlighted by us, then please do get in touch.
Silvana Westbury,
Acting Head of Communications
Diamond Light Source is the UK's national synchrotron science facility, located at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.
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