A Note from Steve Dierker

November 8, 2011

Steve Dierker

Steve Dierker

One day last week, we received advance notice from Nature Chemical Biology about an imminent publication on research done at NSLS by long-time users. The very next day, a query came in from a postdoc who wants to bring samples for the first time to NSLS. That is a wonderful juxtaposition of events.

I have from User Administration Manager Kathy Nasta this snapshot of user statistics for NSLS operations in fiscal year 2011, which just ended:

  • User count: 2,315 (2,228 last year)
  • Total publications submitted: 901 (894 last year)

Science is going strong at the venerable NSLS.

We are equally excited about progress on new beamlines for NSLS-II. Building 728M, located east of NSLS, has become the headquarters for development of beamlines beyond the initial six “project” beamlines. In mid-October, Beamline Project Manager Steve Hulbert, ISR beamline leader Christie Nelson, and Eileen Morello, who provides administrative support, moved into their new quarters. They will be joined soon by FXI beamline leader Wah-keat Lee and others as staffing builds for NEXT, which stands for NSLS-II Experimental Tools. I reported on this suite of beamlines in the September issue of eNews.

We also have a new acronym to learn: ABBIX, for Advanced Beamlines for Biological Investigations with X-rays. These are the three NSLS-II beamlines being built with support from the National Institutes of Health. When they come on board, ABBIX staff will join the NEXT folks in 728M.

The six NEXT, three ABBIX and three Type II beamlines – two supported by NIST and one by the New York Structural Biology Center – all started as beamline development proposals in 2010. Along with the six beamlines being built as part of the NSLS-II construction project, we have a total of 18 beamline construction projects that are under way to make the capabilities of NSLS-II available as rapidly as possible. These beamlines will provide a total of 28 separate endstations where experiments can be done, and 21 of these endstations will be able to operate simultaneously.

We are continuing to work with the user community to build up the cutting-edge capabilities at NSLS-II required to support an outstanding set of science and technology programs. Beginning later this month, a set of three Science Advisory Committee (SAC) Study Panels will conduct reviews of the 14 new NSLS-II Beamline Development Proposals that were submitted in 2011.

2011-2708  |  INT/EXT  |  Newsroom