Advanced Photon Source Users Organization

Advanced Photon Source Users Organization
Name	Advanced Photon Source Users Organization
Formation	1995
Type	Scientific user organization
Headquarters	Argonne National Laboratory
Leader title	Chair

Advanced Photon Source Users Organization The Advanced Photon Source Users Organization is a scientific user organization associated with the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory that advocates for beamline users, coordinates community input, and supports research collaborations across national laboratories and universities. It engages stakeholders including staff from Argonne National Laboratory, representatives from Department of Energy, and visiting scientists funded by agencies such as the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health. The organization liaises with facility operations, interacts with international synchrotron partners like European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Diamond Light Source, and Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute, and organizes workshops, governance elections, and outreach with societies such as the American Physical Society and Materials Research Society.

History

The organization's origins trace to user advocacy movements at major facilities including Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource and Brookhaven National Laboratory in the late 20th century, formalizing governance structures similar to the Generic Research Reactor Users Association model. Early milestones involved coordination with leadership from Argonne National Laboratory and policy discussions with the United States Department of Energy during the Clinton administration and subsequent Bush administration tenures. The group played roles in community responses to upgrades such as the Advanced Photon Source Upgrade Project and collaborated with projects like the Linac Coherent Light Source and the Spallation Neutron Source planning committees. Notable historical interactions include consultations with principal investigators from institutions such as University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Organization and Governance

Governance follows models used by scientific societies such as the American Chemical Society and American Physical Society, with elected officers—chair, vice-chair, secretary—and committees for operations, beamline access, and diversity modeled after National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine practices. The organization holds elections at annual meetings attended by delegations from institutions including University of California, Berkeley, Columbia University, Princeton University, and University of Michigan. It maintains bylaws influenced by advisory committees such as the DOE Office of Science advisory panels and coordinates with the Argonne National Laboratory Directorate and the Chicago Office of the DOE. Committee chairs have included researchers with appointments at places like Yale University, Harvard University, and Stanford University.

Membership and User Community

Membership spans scientists, engineers, and students from research centers including Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and international partners such as CERN and Max Planck Society institutes. The community includes researchers funded by agencies like the European Research Council and the Wellcome Trust, and participants from corporations such as General Electric and Boeing engaged in applied synchrotron studies. Student involvement connects graduate programs at California Institute of Technology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Cornell University, while postdoctoral fellows from Brookhaven National Laboratory and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory contribute to user committees. The organization fosters inclusion modeled on initiatives by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and coordinates with diversity programs run by the National Science Foundation.

Facilities and Services

The organization interfaces with beamline facilities at the Advanced Photon Source, coordinating user access to experimental stations such as X-ray diffraction, coherent scattering, and spectroscopy endstations inspired by techniques developed at European Synchrotron Radiation Facility and Photon Factory. It advises on support services including remote proposal submission systems patterned after ISIS Neutron and Muon Source portals, sample environment setups akin to those at Swiss Light Source, and computational resources analogous to Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility. The group works with facility staff to ensure alignment with standards from organizations like the International Union of Crystallography and collaborates with instrument teams at laboratories such as Argonne's Center for Nanoscale Materials and Materials Research Collaborative Access Team.

Programs and Activities

Programs include annual user meetings, workshops, and training schools patterned after events from the Gordon Research Conferences, Materials Research Society symposia, and Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics tutorials. Activities include proposal review panels, beamtime allocation advisory committees, and outreach forums engaging stakeholders such as representatives from U.S. Congress oversight committees and funding bodies like the Office of Naval Research. The organization organizes topical workshops on techniques in collaboration with academics from Johns Hopkins University, Pennsylvania State University, and University of Minnesota, and coordinates special sessions with editorial boards from journals like Nature, Science, and Physical Review Letters.

Funding and Partnerships

Funding for activities typically draws on support from the United States Department of Energy Office of Science alongside institutional contributions from Argonne National Laboratory and partnering universities including University of California system campuses. The organization cultivates partnerships with international facilities such as Canadian Light Source and Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and maintains links with industry consortia including SEMATECH and corporate research arms at IBM Research and Toyota Research Institute. Collaborative grants have involved agencies like the National Institutes of Health for biomedical beamline development and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for technology-transfer initiatives.

Impact and Notable Research Contributions

The organization has facilitated research leading to advances cited alongside work at Harvard University, MIT, and Stanford University in areas including protein crystallography, battery materials characterization, and catalysis studies. Users supported through its advocacy contributed to high-impact publications in journals such as Nature Materials, Nature Communications, and Science Advances, and to structural determinations deposited in databases maintained by institutions like the Protein Data Bank. Collaborations have intersected with major projects at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Argonne's Center for Nanoscale Materials yielding innovations in energy storage, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductor research recognized by awards such as the R&D 100 Awards and citations in reports from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Category:Scientific organizations in the United States Category:Organizations established in 1995