October 25, 2006

NSLS Users Recognized

Each year, a number of NSLS users win prestigious awards in their field of scientific research. The following represent a collection of some of the most recent awards:

2006 Alvin Van Valkenburg award goes to Li Li

NSLS user Li Li is the 2006 recipient of the Alvin Van Valkenburg award. This international award is given every second year in the name of physicist Alvin Van Valkenburg, co-inventor of the diamond anvil cell, to honor a young scientist whose research involves high pressure.

Li Li

Li received her Ph.D. in geophysics from Stony Brook University in 2003 and is an adjunct research assistant professor at the Stony Brook Mineral Physics Institute. She started using beamline X17B2 as a graduate student in 1998 to study the rheology of minerals at high pressures and temperatures.

Rheological properties of materials at high pressure are valuable in many scientific fields, including geoscience, which is Li’s concentration. Geoscientists obtain insight about the dynamics of the earth by deforming minerals at mantle conditions. Li probes these properties in-situ using synchrotron x-rays. She also performs theoretical calculations in collaboration with the University College London.

The Van Valkenburg award was presented at the 2006 High Pressure Gordon Conference in Biddeford, Maine on June 29, 2006.

Dev Chidambaram receives 2005 Hans-Jürgen Engell Prize

The International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE) awarded the 2005 Hans-Jürgen Engell Prize to NSLS user Dev Chidambaram in recognition of his scientific work and publications in the field of electrochemistry.

Dev Chidambaram

The ISE is a professional organization for electrochemists, with 1,400 members from more than 60 countries. Chidambaram received his prize, consisting of a plaque and 500 euros, at the organization’s 2006 annual meeting, held recently in Edinburgh, Scotland. Chidambaram delivered a keynote lecture on September 1, 2006.

Chidambaram joined Brookhaven Lab in 2004 as a Goldhaber Distinguished Fellow. His research focuses on protecting metals from corrosion and remediating toxic metals and radionuclides in the environment. In a project funded by the U.S. Air Force, Chidambaram found that molybdenum may be a viable replacement for chromate coatings, which are used to coat metals to prevent corrosion but are carcinogenic. Later, this result was used as a starting point for a program funded by the U.S. Army. Working with a team from Stony Brook University, Chidambaram has developed a new molybdate-based coating to prevent the deterioration of depleted uranium. Both programs extensively used the analytical techniques at the NSLS to study the materials.

Simone Raoux, Jean Jordan-Sweet Take Best Paper Award at 2006 EPCOS

NSLS users Simone Raoux and Jean Jordan-Sweet won one of three best paper awards given annually at the European Symposium on Phase Change and Ovonic Science (EPCOS) for work done in part at NSLS beamline X20C.

Simone Raoux

Jean Jordan-Sweet

The award was presented in May at the 2006 EPCOS in Grenoble, France, for the paper “Scaling properties of phase change nanostructures and thin films.”

Using time-resolved x-ray diffraction (XRD), the researchers studied the thickness and size-dependent behavior of ultra-thin films and nanostructures, which are important for their applications in solid-state memory devices that could one day replace digital camera flash cards. The goal, Raoux said, is to find a small-scale phase change material that would allow for faster and cheaper technology.

Raoux, from the IBM Almaden Research Center, and Jordan-Sweet, from the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, started working on the project at the NSLS more than two years ago. Other companies involved in the research included Infineon Technologies and Macronix International Co.

Stephen Harrison wins Gregori Aminoff prize

Stephen Harrison, a former NSLS user, has been awarded the 2006 Gregori Aminoff Prize in Crystallography by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Harrison received the prestigious award along with Oxford University professor David Stuart, "for their remarkable contributions in virus crystallography."

Stephen Harrison

The Aminoff prize is given out annually to scientists or research groups who have made a major contribution to the field of crystallography. It consists of a gold medal, a diploma, and a cash award, and is named after Swedish crystallographer Gregori Aminoff, the first scientist to introduce crystallography to Sweden.

Harrison was a regular NSLS user from the mid 80s through the end of the 90s. He worked mainly on beamline X25, studying the structure of DNA protein complexes, in particular, those that control the process of transcription. He also served on the NSLS Science Advisory Committee, which advices the NSLS Chair and the Associate Laboratory Director for Light Sources on scientific, technical, and policy issues related to the optimization of the scientific productivity of the NSLS. Harrison, a Harvard Medical School professor, used the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) to conduct most of his research in virus crystallography.

The prize was presented at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on June 7, 2006. A two-day symposium illuminating the latest developments and results in the field of structural work on viruses was organized to honor the prizewinners.

ARTICLE BY: Kendra Snyder