Recipients of the 2011 Users' Executive Committee awards, Student Poster Competition awards, and Photography Contest awards were announced Tuesday, October 4th at the ALS User Meeting. Winners are pictured below with UEC Chair David Obsorn.

David A. Shirley Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement at the ALS

Dr. Subrata Chakraborty, for “the design and execution of the most important and difficult experiment relevant to understanding the origin and evolution of the solar system.”

David Shirley was a Professor of Chemistry at UC Berkeley and Director of LBNL from 1980 to 1989, and was instrumental in having the Advanced Light Source built.  He is now retired from the lab.

Klaus Halbach Award for Innovative Instrumentation at the ALS

Dr. Yi-De Chuang for "the world-leading achievements that have revolutionized conventional soft x-ray scattering instrumentation and enabled the first time-resolved resonant scattering experiment at the Linac Coherent Light Source.”

Klaus Halbach was a senior staff scientist at LBNL who pioneered the development of undulators using permanent magnets, and other innovations in accelerator physics.  Even though he retired from LBNL in 1991, he remained active in lab projects and student training until his death in 2000.

Tim Renner User Services Award for Outstanding Support to the ALS User Community

Mr. Ed Domning and Mr. Brian Smith, for "creating solutions using LabView that enable users to automate experimental endstations and synchronize them with accelerator operations.” To quote from the nomination, “Their skill, dedication, and calmness in finding solutions helps users achieve their scientific goals and underscores the results-oriented attitude of the Advanced Light Source.”

Tim Renner was a beamline scientist at the ALS who died at an early age, and who during his career touched everyone that knew him with his caring attitude to others and his larger-than-life personality. This award recognizes the services of others across the ALS organization who, like Tim, have made outstanding contributions to the ALS User Community.

Student Poster Competition Award Winners

The first place winner gave a talk describing her research on Tuesday morning. All winners received cash prizes. (From left to right):

First place: Alice England (UC Berkeley) "On the hydration and hydrolysis of carbon dioxide."

Second place: Frank Meyer (University of Wuerzburg) "The electronic structure of L-Cysteine in aqueous solution studied by soft x-rays."

Third place: Sara Blomberg (Lund University) "HPXPS study of the oxidation of 10nm PdAg nanoparticles."

Photography Contest Winners

(From left to right) Photos that won the Annual Photography Contest are "Inspection" by Wanli Yang, "Next Generation Scientist" by Zhi Liu, and "untitled" by Elizabeth Tichenor.

All of the award winners and meeting organizers are pictured here together at the Awards Dinner.

Go back to the 2011 ALS User Meeting page, see the original calls for Award nominations, Poster submissions, and the Photo Contest.