Grand Challenges and Opportunities with the Best X-ray and Neutron Sources

A German-Swedish-Russian Initative to promote young scientists embedded in the RAC and IRI collaboration frameworks

The AOF Synchrotron Radiation School will present a range of lectures and practical sessions relating to the theory and applications of synchrotron radiation to a wide range of science and technology research. The school is aimed at science and engineering graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and early career researchers from across the Asia-Oceania region who are interested in pursuing a career in synchrotron radiation-related fields.

School curriculum

This school will focus on the basics of of crystalline structure determination, by use of X-ray diffraction, and on the relevant refinement and analysis methods used in such determination.

The primary languages of the school are both English and French.

Registration deadline: 10th June 2017.

For more information and registration, visit:

http://crm2.univ-lorraine.fr/lab/fr/education/congres/nancy2017/informations-generales/

Seminars

During the first days of your stay, a series of introductory lectures will make you familiar with the basic principles of neutrons and x-rays :

• Fundamental principles
• Techniques used for their production (nuclear reactor, synchrotron)
• Instrumentation and measurement techniques
• Interaction with matter

 Further on during your stay, various scientists from the ILL and the ESRF will give you insight into some more specific aspects of the application of neutrons and x-rays in a number different scientific fields, such as:

• Diffraction and structure of materials
• Imaging
• Nuclear and particle phyiscs
• Structural biology
• Magnetism
• Spectroscopy and inelastic scattering
• Soft matter studies
• and other examples of today's scientific questions

 In general, the content and the difficulty of the presentations will be adapted such that they are accessible for a third-year student who is interested in these subjects.

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Project work

During a large portion of your time you will work on an individual scientific project, embedded in one of the research groups at the ILL or ESRF. You will be tutored by one or several scientists of the institutes, with whom you will work together and who will ensure assistance and any other help you may need.

These projects are proposed by our research groups and are typically closely related to their actual scientific activities. They are therefore quite diverse and may be from any possible field on which the members of our institutes are working. We will try to match the subjects with your personal interests if you mention them to us and if it is possible; it may also be the occasion for you to discover a field which is completely new to you.

At the end of your stay, a seminar will be organized in which all participants give a short presentation of the results they have obtained.

 And also…

In addition to the series of lectures and your work on a project with one of our research groups, some activities will be organized in the evenings or on weekends, like excursions into town or into the mountains which are surrounding Grenoble.

Topics

The school is aimed at Masters and PhD students from all disciplines with an interest in geometric and mathematical techniques to address shape, space and structure in nature, physical sciences and design. The school will revolve around the following headlines:

• 2D geometry and topology
• self-assembly of soft matter into liquid crystals
• origami / kirigami in material science
• networks, knots and tangles
• simulation and properties of surface geometries in 3D space

 Attendance will be limited to 24 students to be selected from the applications received.

Confirmed Lecturers:

Stephen Hyde (Australian National University)
Gerd Schröder-Turk (Murdoch University)
Myfanwy Evans (TU-Berlin)
Toen Castle (UPenn)
Martin C. Pedersen (University of Copenhagen)
Jacob Kirkensgaard (University of Copenhagen)

• Introduction to absorbance, fluorescence and circular dichroism spectroscopy
• Principles of CD spectroscopy
• Linear dichroism
• Good practice
• Data bases for biomacromolecules
• CD of membrane proteins
• What is inside a CD spectrometer
• DNA-metalcomplex interactions
• Applications of SRCD and CD to structural and functional genomics
• CD theory & Dichrocalc

St Andrews PX Summer School

The University of St Andrews will be hosting a protein crystallography summer school once again this year, which will take place 20-26 August.

The course aims to cover the theoretical and practical aspects of protein crystallography from protein expression and purification, through crystal growth to data collection on in-house and synchrotron sources, phasing methods, automated model building and phase extension, refinement, and validation. Hands-on sessions in data processing (XIA2, DIALS), molecular replacement, MAD/SAD phasing, refinement and electron density map interpretation (in COOT) will be included.

The School is intended for first/second year postgraduates or postdocs new to crystallography. The week is very intensive, and gives a concentrated overview of the methods which many find useful.

As in the past, priority is given to UK applicants because of the funding arrangements, but is open to a limited number of overseas applicants.

The lectures and practical exercises will give basics for: The hydrogen economy and hydrogen storage technologies; fundamentals of gas storage; basics of neutron scattering and in particular in situ neutron diffraction and neutron spectroscopy; characterizing sorption behavior of porous materials by ab initio and crystal structure refinements and investigation of diffusion and mass transfer properties.

The twenty-third annual Center for High Resolution Neutron Scattering (CHRNS) "Summer School on Methods and Applications of Neutron Spectroscopy" will be held at the NIST Center for Neutron Research (NCNR). This year's summer school is devoted to methods and applications of neutron spectroscopy.

Neutron reflectometry and small-angle scattering techniques will not be covered.

The EMBO course will include lectures on:

 The third annual “Modern Methods in Rietveld Refinement for Structural Analysis” school will be held from June 18th-23th, 2017, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in close partnership with the Shull-Wollan Center Joint Institute for Neutron Sciences (University of Tennessee and ORNL) and Bruker-AXS.Â

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The primary goal of this school is to teach participants Rietveld refinement and other methods for evaluating crystal structures from powder diffraction data with an emphasis on data collected on US national user facility beamlines optimised for structural analysis such as the 11-BM, 17-BM, and 11-ID-B synchrotron beamlines at the APS of Argonne National Laboratory, the POWGEN and NOMAD time-of-flight neutron diffraction beamlines at the SNS of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the XPD synchrotron beamline at the NSLS-II of BNL.  This course will emphasise traditional solid state compounds (non-molecular), and will use the TOPAS software as the platform for Rietveld refinement (complementary trial license will be provided to participants). Â

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There will be a special secondary emphasis this year on the complementary use of pair distribution function (PDF) data to carry out small-box refinements for average unit cells, highlighting the new functionality of the TOPAS software to carry out both Rietveld and PDF refinements. Both NOMAD (neutron PDF) and 11-ID-B (synchrotron PDF) beamline scientists will be present as instructors at the course, and there will be an opportunity for participants to have data suitable for both Rietveld and PDF refinement collected on their own sample at both synchrotron and neutron beamlines.

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While this course is open to all applicants, priority will be given to Ph.D. students and post-doctoral researchers from North American institutions.  Completed applications should be received by March 31, 2017, although later applications may still be considered.

Application deadline:Â Monday, April 10, 2017

The main purpose of the National School on Neutron and X-ray Scattering is to educate graduate students attending North American universities in the use of major neutron and X-ray facilities. Lectures, presented by researchers from academia, industry and national laboratories, will include basic tutorials on the principles of scattering theory and the characteristics of the sources, as well as seminars on the application of scattering methods to a variety of scientific subjects. Students will conduct short experiments at Argonne National Laboratory's Advanced Photon Source and at Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Spallation Neutron Source and High Flux Isotope Reactor, which provides hands-on experience for using neutron and synchrotron sources.
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The selection process is highly competitive with priority given to students who are in an early stage in their research projects and who are likely to use a wide range of X-ray and/or neutron techniques and thus will benefit from the breadth of the school.

Fundamentals, Applications, and Analytical Methods