SSRL’s annual Users’ Meeting celebrated 30 years of phenomenal science and, in the packed Panofsky Auditorium, users from around the world were urged to communicate their scientific achievements to both the public and Congress.

User meeting coordinator Cathy Knotts (SSRL), co-organizer Timothy McPhillips (SSRL), Jonathan Dorfan (DO), and Keith Hodgson (SSRL) enjoy Pat Dehmer’s (DOE) talk. (Photo by Diana Rogers)

Patricia Dehmer, Associate Director of Science for the DOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences, spoke before many of the 300 meeting attendees. She praised SSRL’s remarkable science program and the outstanding science coming out of the facility.

Lab Director Jonathan Dorfan’s opening remarks stressed the importance of communicating research results to the public, press and scientific peers, encouraging researchers to acknowledge the role big machines play in their ability to do the science, and to partner with the Lab to "get the message out in a way that’s helpful to us as a community and to the public, who’s funding this."

Distilling 30 years of perspective, SSRL Director Keith Hodgson praised the Lab’s "fantastic" staff, as well as seminal work in the field of synchrotron radiation, including pioneering many techniques and applications of synchrotron radiation and being a long-time leader in storage ring and magnet development. The 2003 fiscal year (shortened by the SPEAR upgrade) ended with 1,720 users working on active proposals. There have been 6,466 scientific publications since 1974 that relied on SSRL.