A Message from Donald DiMarzio

information from the Users' Executive Committee

Donald DiMarzio enlarge

Donald DiMarzio

Dear fellow CFN users:

On behalf of the CFN Users' Executive Committee (UEC), I am pleased to report to you on recent happenings since our last newsletter.

Users' Meeting Recap

We held our NSLS-II & CFN Joint Users' Meeting this past May, with an excellent turnout and strong participation by our user community.  CFN was well represented in the talks, workshops, and poster sessions.  The meeting plenary session featured a keynote address from Teri Odom (Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor, Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University), as well as invited scientific talks from Christophe Detavernier (Professor, Department of Solid-State Sciences, Ghent University) and Mark Sutton (Professor, Physics Department, McGill University). We would like to congratulate the winners of the meeting poster session contest: Wenrui Zhang (Brookhaven Lab), Taras Stanislavchuk (New Jersey Institute of Technology), and Tiffany Victor (Stony Brook University). At the meeting, we elected three new members to the CFN UEC—Latha Venkataraman (Columbia University), Sherif Abdelaziz (Stony Brook University), and Jiabao Zheng (Columbia University)—and the chair of the UEC passed from Stan Wong to me. On behalf of the UEC, I would like to thank Stan for his exemplary service these past two years.

Announcements

  • Of technical interest to the CFN user community is the recently installed NanoscribeTM two-photon ultra-high-resolution 3D printer and the transfer of our Elmitec XPEEM/LEEM Spectro-Microscopy system to NSLS-II. 
  • The UEC would also like to wish Eric Stach, leader of the Electron Microscopy Group, well in his new position at the University of Pennsylvania. Eric will not be that far away, and he will to continue to work with CFN. 
  • Plans are moving forward on Discovery Park. Scheduled to open in 2021, Discovery Park will include a Science and User Support Center building with a new visitor center, office space for users and outside organizations, and a new conference center. The park will also include a new housing facility for users.

Federal Budget Developments

We are closely following the ongoing budget negotiations between the administration, House, and Senate, and are hopeful for a positive outcome. Consequently, we fully encourage you to keep your user proposals coming in. As the reputation of CFN grows, we are receiving more high-quality competitive proposals. The participation of CFN will greatly enhance your research programs, increasing your publication output and job opportunities for your students and postdocs.

Summary

The UEC always looks forward to hearing from you, and we sincerely hope you can join us in our efforts to improve the user experience at CFN. We are constantly looking for additional members, especially from industry, to be active participants in the UEC.

Please feel free to send me any thoughts, comments, or ideas on how we can improve your experience at CFN. I happen to be a locally based user, and I would be more than happy to meet with you the next time you are at CFN.

—Donald DiMarzio
2017–18 CFN UEC Chair (chair@cfnuec.org)

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