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Chi-Chang's CornerDOE Triennial Review Feedback PositiveNovember 20, 2008
We have received the report from the U.S. Department of Energy's triennial review held last spring, which, overall, includes very positive feedback about our productivity and operation, and our continued ability to serve a large number of users. The reviewers were particularly impressed by the progress made by the NSLS detector program. They also credited our staff for making these accomplishments with a very limited budget, and recognized the NSLS management for engaging users and staff in the development of a Five-Year Strategic Plan meant to keep the facility as vital as it is today. However, the reviewers expressed concerns about the high workload of beamline scientists, the sustainability of critical skill sets as a large number of accelerator and operation staff are transferred to NSLS-II, and the lack of a clearly defined transition plan from NSLS to NSLS-II. We share these concerns and will work with stakeholders to integrate solutions into the strategic plan in the coming months. Work is underway to develop safety envelopes tailored for each beamline on the experimental floor. This effort is a result of the latest Integrated Safety Management review and our desire to incorporate Human Performance principles to work at the beamlines. We expect that the envelopes will help define the more routine tasks involved in beamline maintenance and operations and that this process can help us find error traps or tasks that can be completed more efficiently through the use of checklists and procedures. Please help our safety staff with the development of this needed documentation. As part of his ongoing effort to ensure the performance of the NSLS, Joe Dvorak, of the Experimental Systems Division, recently finished characterizing the facility's x-ray spectroscopy beamlines. By comparing their actual flux to theoretical values, Joe found that most of these beamlines are performing well. Beamline staff can now use his measurements as a baseline for recalibration on a routine basis. Next, Joe will characterize other types of beamlines as well as develop tools to measure energy resolution and spot size. This effort provides important information to the users of the facility as they design their experiments, and guides the planning of beamline upgrades by the facility. The NSLS is launching a new initiative to attract and enhance industrial involvement at the facility. To coordinate this project, Dr. Jun Wang, who joined the NSLS recently from the Advanced Photon Source, has been appointed as the Industrial Program Coordinator. Jun will work closely with industrial researchers as well as NSLS and Participating Research Team beamline staff to identify and exploit new opportunities in industrial applications using the synchrotron source. Please email Jun to discuss your interests and possible projects. Finally, a team of physicists from Brookhaven used the NSLS to help sharpen images of the energy spectra in high-temperature superconductors. Using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), the researchers studied a copper-oxide material at temperatures above and below the superconducting transition temperature. The team confirmed that the electron pairs needed to carry current emerge above the transition temperature, before superconductivity sets in, but only in a particular direction. You can read more in this issue of eNews. |
The National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, is a national user research
facility funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Science. The NSLS operates two electron
storage rings: an X-Ray ring and a Vacuum UltraViolet (VUV) ring which provide intense light spanning the electromagnetic
spectrum from the infrared through x-rays. Each year over 2300 scientists from universities, industries and government
labs perform research at the NSLS.
