A Note from Steve Dierker

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Happy New Year!

Even though Brookhaven Lab operates within the federal fiscal cycle, which begins anew every October 1, the month of January always feels like a new beginning. As we look ahead, however, we should also take a moment to review the past year.

In June 2011, Peter Siddons and colleagues won an R&D 100 Award for development of the Maia x-ray microprobe, which has revolutionized our ability to do high-speed spectroscopic imaging.

Then, in September 2011, DOE announced ARPA-E grants for energy research. We learned that Dario Arena is part of the consortium that won a grant to develop a new class of permanent magnets that do not contain any rare-earth elements.

Here is a sampling of other science highlights during the year, marked by publications in high-profile journals.

• Protein Shows How Plants Keep Their Mouths Shut (Nature)
• New Highly Stable Fuel-Cell Catalyst Gets Strength from its Nano Core (Angewandte Chemie)
• Activated Graphene Makes Superior Supercapacitors for Energy Storage (Science)
• Rare Coupling of Magnetic and Electric Properties in a Single Material (Physical Review Letters)
• Bacterial Protein Caught in the Act of Secreting Sticky Appendages (Nature)
• Injecting Electrons into a Single Sheet of Carbon Atoms through Chemical Substitution (Science)

And here are some milestones and notable events that occurred in FY11.

October 2010

• Photon Sciences Directorate created
• Celebration to mark closing of ring building

November 2010

• Contract placed for the first round of insertion devices

December 2010

• NSLS triennial review

January 2011

• NEXT beamlines announced

March 2011

• NSLS-II Project Passes First Occupancy Evaluation
• Three milestones celebrated: 50 percent completion of NSLS-II Project, beneficial occupancy of the first section of ring building, placement of first magnet girder in ring building

April 2011

• Local high-tech company wins $6.5-million contract to build RF cavities for NSLS-II
• Energy Secretary Chu visits NSLS-II
• Users’ Executive Committee represents NSLS, NSLS-II in Washington, DC, exhibition

May 2011

• 2010 Photon Sciences Annual Report (http://www.bnl.gov/ps/annualReport/)
• New Photon Sciences website (http://www.bnl.gov/ps/)
• Annual NSLS-CFN Users’ Meeting, with special NSLS-II poster session

July 2011

• Brookhaven Lab announces $7.8-million refrigeration contract for NSLS-II
• NSLS-II opens to Summer Sunday visitors

September 2011

• $5.2-million contract goes to New Jersey company to build hutches for NSLS-II

As you can see, we had a full year and a good year.

In the near future, we expect to take beneficial occupancy of the fifth and last section of the NSLS-II ring building. Other milestones are coming up.