Message from
the Acting Director
by Janos Kirz
I have been sitting at Daniel's desk
for almost four weeks now. This may be a good time to share
some impressions. I am thoroughly impressed by the talent,
the dedication, the professionalism, and the team spirit of
the ALS staff at every level. This level of excellence is
no accident. It is the result of the vision and leadership
that Daniel brought to the organization, and the care with
which he built the team to run it. I was delighted that last
week Daniel came to the annual ALS picnic. His condition is
improving, and it is certainly my hope that he will be back
at his desk in the not too distant future.
The ALS continues on its path of vigorous
development. The number of users, as well as the number of
operating beamlines continues to grow, and projects for future
facilities are moving forward at a rapid pace. I am particularly
pleased that Carolyn Larabell received a major new NIH grant
to develop a Biomedical Technology Resource Center at the
ALS, centered around XM-2, a new microscope designed for high-resolution
tomography. Planning for top-off operation is proceeding,
with support from DOE/BES. There is a strong effort to bring
about the construction of the much needed user hostel, with
projected occupancy two years from now.
Janos Kirz welcomed particpants to
the
ALS/UEC Strategic Planning Retreat.
My assignment for the near future is
to develop a strategic plan for the ALS. The plan put together
by Daniel nearly five years ago is well on its way to being
realized, and we need to decide on the next phase. Neville
has already organized retreats with the UEC and with ALS scientific
staff to seek input and invited your input through a note
in the last issue of ALSNews. I want to reiterate this invitation—if
you have not expressed your views before, please do so now.
More generally—if there is anything I can do to make
your work at the ALS more productive, please do let me know.
The mission of the ALS is to facilitate outstanding science,
and we are here to carry out that mission.
Contact: Janos Kirz, JKirz@lbl.gov
UEC Corner: ALS/UEC
Strategic
Planning Retreat
by Dennis Lindle
As Janos alluded to above, a joint ALS/UEC
strategic-planning retreat was held June 9–10. The approximately
45 attendees included many of the ALS senior and scientific
staff, past and present UEC members, and other users representing
their respective research communities. In organizing the retreat,
Neville and I asked presenters to (1) describe the current
frontiers of their field; (2) imagine where their field will
be in 5–10 years; and (3) suggest what new tools will
be needed for the ALS to remain competitive. We weren't disappointed!
Not only did we hear excellent overviews of the many fields
using the ALS, but numerous suggestions were provided for
both evolutionary and revolutionary enhancements of ALS capabilities.
UEC members at the retreat. Front
row: Sophie Canton, Corie Ralston, Gary Mitchell; second
row: Ed Westbrook, Keith Jackson, Dennis Lindle, Dan
Dessau; third row: Greg Denbeaux, John Bozek, Alex
Moewes, Eli Rotenberg.
Now the hard part begins: prioritizing
these many suggestions into a coherent strategic plan. To
continue to engage users in this process, I recommended that
the ALS and UEC jointly identify several small working groups
to analyze suggestions in their fields of expertise. In the
longer term, we also plan to use the workshops scheduled during
the Annual Users' Meeting in October as an opportunity to
describe some of these new ideas to the users who would benefit
from them. Finally, I would like to second Janos's invitation
for users to express their views on the strategic-planning
process, either through the UEC or directly to the ALS. The
ALS management is intent on hearing about user needs—your
opinion does count!
Contact: Dennis Lindle, lindle@unlv.nevada.edu
Nobel Laureate
Steven Chu named
Berkeley Lab Director
 The
University of California (UC) Board of Regents announced on
June 17 that Steven Chu, co-winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize
in physics, will be the sixth director of Berkeley Lab. Chu's
appointment will take effect August 1, replacing departing
director Charles V. Shank. Chu earned his doctorate from UC
Berkeley and is currently the Theodore and Francis Geballe
Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford. In 1997,
Chu was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji
and William D. Phillips "for development of methods to
cool and trap atoms with laser light." Beginning in 1989,
Chu expanded his research scope to include polymer physics
and biophysics at the single-molecule level. "Steve Chu
brings to this position outstanding leadership qualities and
a record of superior achievement in science," said UC
President Robert C. Dynes. "His combination of skills
is precisely what we need to keep the Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory at the forefront of scientific excellence and to
guide the lab wisely through the upcoming potential contract
competition." Read the full
story.
Sam Bader gives
colloquium
on nanomagnetism
Sam Bader, a senior physicist and group leader at Argonne
National Laboratory, gave a colloquium on "Opportunities
in Nanomagnetism" to a packed roomful of ALS staff and
students on June 17. Bader is a co-editor of "Magnetism
Beyond 2000," a broad survey of the most significant
recent and ongoing scientific and technological developments
in magnetism. He has co-authored over 290 publications and
appears in the ISI 1981–97 "most cited physicists"
listing. Bader, a graduate of UC Berkeley and chair of the
ALS Scientific Advisory Committee, was in town for the SAC
meeting this month and agreed to stay an extra day to give
the colloquium.
 Bader
began his presentation with some historical perspectives,
acknowledging the long history of the science of magnetism.
He credits William Gilbert with writing the first real textbook
that embraced the scientific method, "De Magnete, "
ca. 1600. To demonstrate how far we've come since then, Bader
showed a woodcut illustration of geomagnetism from that work
(a circle with arrows in it) and juxtaposed it with a 2002
representation of a magnetic vortex structure (also a circle
with arrows in it). The difference, of course, is about 15
orders of magnitude. In just the 50 years since magnetic hard
disks were introduced, the information density has increased
by a factor of 100 million, faster than Moore's Law for computer
chips. However, he said, we will soon reach the point where
the magnetic domains in continuous media will be so small
as to become unstable, necessitating a transition to "patterned
media," in which isolated, single-grain magnetic bits
are arranged on a substrate, i.e., nanotechnology.
Bader went on to discuss several approaches
to fabricating these nanostructures, such as the use of diblock
copolymers (polymer chains that can self-assemble into striped
arrays) to guide the arrangement of nanomagnetic structures
(a "hierarchical" approach) and the use of magnetic
viruses (in which the virus's DNA is replaced by ferromagnetic
material) to build nanomagnetic structures (a "bottom-up"
approach). He also discussed the challenge of producing composite
magnetic materials that interweave, on the nanoscale, the
properties of hard and soft magnets. Such materials could
exhibit higher magnetic performance by a factor of two or
three than the world's strongest commercial permanent magnets
of today, leading to the prospect of saving energy, by, for
example, enabling lighter, more efficient motors. Bader concluded
his talk by listing the "grand challenges" of nanomagnetism:
ultrastrong permanent magnets, ultrahigh density media, spin
transistors, nonvolatile random-access memory, programmable
magnetic logic, hierarchically assembled media, and nanobiomagnetic
sensors.
Reminder: General
user
proposals due July 7
 The
User Services Office is still accepting general user proposals
from scientists who wish to conduct research in the general
sciences at the ALS during the running period from January
through June 2005. The deadline for submissions is Wednesday,
July 7, 2004. (This deadline does not apply to protein crystallography
proposals, which have a separate process and schedule.) Scientists
wishing to renew a previous proposal must download the short
"ALS
Experiment Report and Request for Beamtime" form
and email it as an attachment to the User Services Office
by the July 7 deadline. Proposals cannot be renewed for more
than three cycles after they are first submitted. The following
resources are available for further information:
ALS
User Services Administrator
General
user proposal process (new proposals only)
ALS online forms
ALS
Experiment Report and Request for Beamtime (renewals only)
Beamline
information
Proposal
Study Panel (PSP) scores
Contact: alsproposals@lbl.gov
Workshop on soft
x rays at the
Advanced Photon Source
 The
Advanced Photon Source (APS) will hold a workshop August 5–6,
2004, on "Frontier Science Using Soft X-Rays at the APS."
The goal is to assemble a group of researchers involved with
cutting-edge research to discuss prospects for expansion of
the APS in the soft x-ray regime. Space is limited to 50 participants,
so it is advisable to register, online, as soon as possible.
For additional information, contact Richard Rosenberg (rar@aps.anl.gov)
or go to the workshop Web
site.
Contact: Richard Rosenberg, rar@aps.anl.gov
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