The 11th International Conference on Inelastic X-ray Scattering (IXS2019)

The 11th International Conference on Inelastic X-ray Scattering (IXS2019) was held 23–28 June 2019 at Charles B. Wang Center on the campus of Stony Brook University, New York, USA. This conference series, which started in 1992, serves as the prime forum for the community to highlight the latest scientific and technical advances in inelastic X-ray scattering (IXS). This year it was attended by 148 registered participants from 16 countries: Germany, Japan, UK, France, Sweden, Canada, China, South Korea, Italy, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Switzerland, New Zealand, Finland, Austria and USA. The conference was hosted by the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and was organized by a Local Organizing Committee chaired by Yong Cai (NSLS-II), Mark Dean (BNL) and Ignace Jarrige (NSLS-II).

The conference began with an overview talk by John Hill, Director of NSLS-II, entitled “The past, present and future of inelastic X-ray scattering”. He highlighted the key advances of the field over the last 50 years and the enormous potential impacts in future developments. The scientific program that followed was organized into nine sessions covering science topics ranging from quantum, energy and functional materials to soft, glassy and biological materials, studies in the time domains and under extreme and operando conditions, the latest developments in novel IXS instrumentation, experimental approaches and theories, and the future of IXS with storage-ring upgrades and at new XFEL sources. Each session, where appropriate, began with a plenary talk that introduced the topic with highlights from the latest results of the field. These included the following:

• Young-June Kim (University of Toronto, Canada) on Quantum Materials I
  
• Giacomo Ghiringhelli (Politecnico di Milano, Italy) on Quantum Materials II
  
• Olivier Delaire (Duke University, USA) on Functional Materials
  
• Wanli Yang (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA) on Energy Materials & Catalysis
  
• David Reis (Stanford University, USA) on Time-Domain Spectroscopy
  
• Maurits Haverkort (Heidelberg University, Germany) on Theory
  
• Thomas Gog (Argonne National Laboratory, USA) on Future with Storage Ring based IXS
  
• Chi-Chang Kao (SLAC National Laboratory, USA) on Future with XFEL based IXS

They were followed by invited and contributed presentations in each session. A total of 40 invited and 14 contributed presentations were featured in the 5-day program, leading to many interesting questions and lively discussions. In addition, the poster sessions with 58 posters were very well attended and were extended into coffee breaks throughout the conference. Four of the posters contributed by young scientists were selected by a committee chaired by Nozomu Hiraoka (National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center, Taiwan) to receive the IXS2019 Poster Prize sponsored by the American Physical Society. The winners were as follows:

• Brett Leedahl (Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Germany)
  
• Ekaterina Paerschke (University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA)
  
• Daniel Mazzone (Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA)
  
• Mirko Elbers (Technische Universitat Dortmund, Germany)

A special awards session was held on the last day of the conference to acknowledge the winners and for them to present their work.

IXS2019 Poster Prize winners award ceremony. Pictured L-R: Nozomu Hiraoka (Chair of Poster Prize Award Committee), Brett Leedahl, Ekaterina Paerschke, Daniel Mazzone, Mirko Elbers and Yong Cai (Chair of IXS2019).

Thanks to the IUCr sponsorship, two young scientists received IUCr Young Scientist Awards and also presented their work at the awards session. They were Jaeyun Moon of California Institute of Technology and Yao Wang of Harvard University, USA. Here is what they had to say about the opportunity provided to them by the IUCr:

Jaeyun Moon - “I would like to thank the IUCr for the support I received during IXS2019. During the conference, I learned a great deal about X-ray and neutron scattering instrumentation and its application in many different areas of research ranging from biological systems and soft matter to glasses and quantum materials. This conference also gave me opportunities to meet and socialize with a lot of professors, research scientists, and fellow graduate students and postdocs, many of whom I will be working with in the near future. I am really grateful to the conference organizers for the fruitful conference and IUCr for their support.”

Yao Wang: “I want to express my gratitude again for the support of the IUCr Young Scientist Award, which offered me the opportunity to participate in the IXS2019 conference. This conference is a very important platform to exchange ideas about X-ray scattering with the theoretical and experimental communities. Especially, the IUCr award session allowed me to present my recent theoretical research on time-resolved RIXS spectroscopies. In addition, through discussions with other attendees, I was inspired by many novel ideas and advanced techniques, which are not even published yet. These discussions have motivated some of my future research directions.”

IUCr Young Scientist Award ceremony. John Hill, Director of NSLS-II, presented the Award to the two winners: Jaeyun Moon (Caltech, left) and Yao Wang (Harvard, right).

The chair of the International Steering Committee, Arun Bansil (Northeastern University, USA), gave a nice summary talk to conclude the conference. All in all, this conference was a great success.

We would like to thank all our sponsors and exhibitors, including NSLS-II, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Stony Brook University, IUCr, American Physical Society, Applied Physics Reviews, NSLS-II User’s Executive Committee (UEC), Huber, Kohzu, Incoatec, JETC, Sydor Technologies, X-Spectrum, Inprentus Precision Optics and Bestec, for all their support. The next IXS conference will be hosted by Diamond Light Source, Oxford, UK, in 2021.