The SSRL User’s Meeting featured 26 vendor exhibits. (Photo by Tom Mead)

By Tom Mead

The 29th Annual Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) Users’ Meeting took place in the Panofsky auditorium and on the Green October 7-9.

The Users’ Meeting provides a dynamic forum for the presentation and discussion of research activities from SSRL and the synchrotron community. New data and developments are shared through invited talks and poster presentations highlighting research activities conducted at SSRL over the past year. In conjunction with this meeting, four longer, more intensive workshops were held during the last two days of the meeting.

SSRL Director Keith Hodgson noted, "This was a very successful meeting with over 200 participants attending 24 talks, 46 poster presentations, 26 vendor exhibits, four workshops, two evening receptions and one Oktoberfest themed dinner during the three-day event."

A poster competition was also held in which graduate students competed for poster prizes in several scientific categories, including Materials Science, Environmental Science and Biological Sciences. Four prizes were awarded to the following graduate students:

• Trevor M. Willey, LLNL, UC Davis (Characterization of Ultrathin Organic Films Using NEXAFS)

• Colleen M. Hansel, Stanford University (Mechanisms of Fe Biomineralization Induced by Dissimilatory Iron Reduction)

• Jeffrey Catalano, Stanford University (X-ray Spectroscopic Investigation of the Distribution and Speciation of Uranium in Contaminated Sediments From the DOE’s Hanford Site)