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Summer Lights
By Monica Bobra
Forty-six students attended the fourth
annual Stanford-Berkeley Summer School on Synchrotron Radiation, held at
SLAC from June 13 to 17. The group of mostly graduate students hailed
from around the world to learn about various synchrotron radiation
applications by listening to fourteen lectures, participating in group
problem-solving sessions and visiting both SSRL and the Advanced Light
Source at LBNL.
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Students in the lobby of Berkeley Lab, hanging
out and discussing the different beam lines they
visited.
(Photo courtesy of
Jennifer Saltzman) |
Anders Nilsson (ESRD), who directs
the program along with Dave Attwood (LBNL), said the summer school grew
out of their realization that the Bay Area had the largest concentration
of synchrotron radiation facilities in the world. Nilsson added,
“Students need to see the breadth of synchrotron radiation applications,
to fields such as physics, chemistry, geoscience and material science.”
This year, students sat in on several experiments, such
as one at ALS to study water formation on iron-oxide surfaces. The
experiment consists of shooting synchrotron radiation through a vacuum
chamber at a single hematite crystal enveloped in water vapor. The
radiation knocks electrons from the metal, in an example of Einstein’s
famous photoelectric effect, which allows scientists to observe how thin
layers of water form on the sample. Studying the various experiments
gave students a flavor of the many applications of synchrotron
radiation. About 60 percent of
the summer school participants are graduate students, 30 percent are
postdocs, and the remaining 10 percent is comprised of a mix of older
scientists and undergraduates. They hail from various countries
including Sweden, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Ireland and Canada — and all
of them have a strong interest in synchrotron radiation, Nilsson said.
This year alone, three of the summer students decided to change their
research methods to include other synchrotron radiation spectroscopic
techniques. Both Attwood and
Nilsson enjoy leading a small group of students to foster one-on-one
teacher-student time. The directors conduct a two-hour feedback session
on the last day of the program, telling each student how synchrotron
radiation could benefit their current research. “Everybody is very
positive about it,” Nilsson said. |
