Events (Jan-June 2023)
The Support Laboratories Group and the Sample Environment Group have attended several events in the first half of this year. A summary of these events are given here.
Contents:
UK Neutron & Muon Science and User Meeting 2023
Both the Support Laboratories Group and the Sample Environment Group have attended this year's NMSUM meeting.
Support Laboratories Group
The Support Laboratories group have a long history of attending the NMSUM meeting, and members of the group regularly organise the student day. Currently, Kun Ma is organising this student day.
Presentation
As in previous years, the Support Laboratories Group sent a representative to the student day to give an introduction to the Support Labs Group, the labs available, and the equipment/techniques available within them. We have found that this results in much better visibility of the group's capabilities among young researchers, who often reach out after the presentation to enquire further about using the various labs for a wide variety of measurements, often during the poster session.
Poster
As in previous years, the industrial placement students within the group presented a poster on their projects at the meeting, showing off their progress and the work they have been conducting using the support labs, as well as advertising the benefits their projects will bring to the user program. To view the posters in full size, please right click and open the image in a new tab.
Poppy McPeake
Poppy's poster focused on the Feromagnetic Resonance and Polarised Neutron Reflectometry aspects of her project.
Poster that Poppy McPeake presented at NMSUM 2023.
Congratulations to Matilda Rhodes
From present industrial placements students to a past student: A big congratulations to Matilda Rhodes on her poster winning the student poster prize. Matilda was an industrial placement student in the Materials Characterisation Laboratory from 2021-2022 and we would like to offer her a hearty congratulations on her excellent work!
Matilda Rhodes with her winning poster.
I asked Matilda for a brief description of her project for the newsletter, and she had this to say:
My PhD (joint between the University of Edinburgh and ISIS) revolves around the characterisation and elemental analysis of lithium ores, particularly the mineral jadarite, which has the same chemical formula as kryptonite! I have been working on the novel synthesis of jadarite to produce phase-pure samples that can help us better understand its structure and elemental distribution as well as its natural formation. I aim to use synthetic jadarite as a standard to develop the technique of muonic X-ray emission spectroscopy at ISIS.
Congratulations again to Matilda!
Sample Environment Group
For the Sample Environment Group, this is their first attendance of the NMSUM meeting; in addition to attending, they had an interactive display at the poster session, which proved to be popular.
Chris Lawson wrote a short article regarding the Sample Environment Group's attendance of the NMSUM meeting:
The Sample Environment (SE) Group have attended the UK Neutron & Muon Science and User Meeting (NMSUM) for the first time.
The group attended several science sessions, on the prowl for new sample environment requirements and previous successes. They were extremely impressed by the complex and varied experiments that had been performed with the SE equipment, finding it highly satisfying to see the end results displayed on the big screen and in papers.
The highlight for the group was the fantastic engagement which occurred with the ‘SE Trade Stand’ that was transported to meeting (see photograph below). The stand featured a whole host of equipment including high-pressure sample cans, custom made sample changers, and even a dilution refrigerator! The whole ensemble fit into a Ford Tourneau courageously piloted by Alex Jones.
Some members of the Sample Environment Group along with their interactive display during the poster session, posing before it got busy.
We very much appreciate the engagement from the User community, and look forward to returning next year.
ESS/ISIS Support Laboratories Symposium
ISIS and the ESS have been working closely for many years, including collaboration between the Support Laboratory facilities. Last year, a joint ISIS/ESS symposium was held at the ESS to build on this collaboration. This year was the 2nd joint ESS/ISIS Support Laboratories Symposium, and expanded the scope greatly with representatives of support laboratories not just from ISIS and the ESS, but also the
ILL, NIST, and ANSTO, enabling a greater degree of cross-organisation working. Given the success of this year's symposium, it was decided to continue with this broader collaboration in future and extend the invitation to other neutron-source support laboratories.
On the first day there were tours of ISIS Neutron and Muon Source available for all participants to see the scope of science covered at ISIS, including a tour of the support laboratory facilities. This was followed by talks in the afternoon covering a range of topics from introducing the various support laboratory facilities and the ways in which they operate to the wider work done within them. These talks were open to all staff.
ISIS Director Roger Eccleston giving a talk introducing ISIS to the delegates.
Jeffrey Sykora describing (neutron detector stuff) (left), Monika Hartl describing the current status of the ESS Support Labs (right).
Martina Sandroni introducing the ILL Support Lab facilities (left),
Deborah Wakeham discussing some common 'visitors' to the ANSTO facility (right).
Discussions between staff from multiple facilities taking place during the breaks, facilitated by tea and coffee.
The second day featured a workshop for the user base, staff and the Support Labs teams to discuss their needs, their plans, current issues faced such as lack of resources. These discussions were quite fruitful, and it has been decided that this wider collaboration between support facilities will continue.
In addition, an article was published on the ISIS news page describing this event in more detail
here. Please follow the link for more information!
