Light Sources 101

Abstract

This tutorial is tailored for students and postdocs, including those who have no prior exposure to synchrotron experiments. It provides a broad introductory overview of the science one can perform at the ALS with an emphasis on some of the experimental techniques, from spectroscopy to scattering and imaging. Each topic will include a general introduction to the technique(s) and examples of applications highlighting the capabilities of the ALS beamlines.

Anyone can perform experiments at the ALS for free, and access to this facility is through a beamtime proposal process. As such, the lunch discussion session will be about how to become a user of the ALS and obtain beamtime, including guidance about how to write a proposal and how proposals are evaluated. This is the place to ask all the questions you have about a particular technique and how to successfully apply it to your scientific project! Students with no/limited prior synchrotron experience are particularly encouraged to attend. 

Agenda (Tuesday, Aug 12, 2025)

DoubleTree Berkeley Marina 

Room: Belvedere Ballroom

8:00 am Registration, Refreshments

8:30 am Welcome from ALS Director – Dimitri Argyriou

8:40 am General capabilities at synchrotrons – what ALS specializes in – Mike Martin

8:55 am ALS Virtual Tour – Ina Reichel

9:10 am Intro to ALS: The Machine – Simon Leemann

9:40 am Coffee break

10:00 am Spectroscopy: Soft X-ray photon-in-photon-out core-level spectroscopy – XAS & RIXS – Wanli Yang

10:30 am Spectroscopy: Angle Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy (ARPES) – Sung-Kwan Mo

11:00 am Spectroscopy: Ambient pressure XPS – Slavo Nemsak

11:30 am Scattering: Coherent x-ray scattering, X-ray Photon Correlation Spectroscopy – Sophie Morley

12:00 pm Lunch break

1:00 pm Structural Biology: BioSAXS – Michal Hammel

1:20 pm Structural Biology: Protein crystallography – Jay Nix

1:40 pm Structural Biology: X-ray footprinting – Corie Ralston

2:00 pm Scattering: SAXS/WAXS – Chenhui Zhu

2:30 pm Coffee break

2:55 pm Microscopy: 3D imaging with micro-CT – Liz Clark

3:25 pm Microscopy: STXM + ptychography – David Shapiro

3:55 pm Machine Learning: Tools for data-driven synchrotron-based research – Tanny Chavez Esparza

4:30 pm Panel: Becoming a user, proposal process, R&D, ALS-U opportunities – Andi Jones, Chenhui Zhu, Dula Parkinson

5:00 pm Conclusion