Spring 2019 has been especially busy and productive for the NCI-SW. External users of our core facilities has grown to 154 people during the six months through March 2019, a more than 25% increase over the same time period last year. The external users come from 85 institutions across academia, large industry, small-business, government, and NGOs. Of these, our long time small-business user, Laser Components DG, recently broke ground on a new R&D facility. In the 16 years that LC-DG has been a user of the ASU core facilities it has grown to 30 full-time employees, two of whom work full time in the NanoFab.
Dr. Paul Westerhoff, Director of LCnano, worked with faculty from NCI-SW partner sites in Virginia and Montana to publish a paper in Science magazine titled “Natural, incidental, and engineered nanomaterials and their impacts on the Earth system”. The article explores the many ways that nanomaterials enter the environment and how they affect the entire Earth system. Interested in learning more about their findings? Visit this link.
The cryogenic transmission electron microscope commissioned last year by the Eyring Materials Center, a focus of a 2018 webinar, played a major role in the CryoEM Workshop hosted at the ASU Tempe campus, attracting 25 participants from 18 institutions. Attendees of the 4-day workshop were introduced to the concepts and applications of cryogenic electron microscopy through hands-on experiences including sample preparation, microscope operation, data collection and analysis. If you are interested in attending future versions of the workshop look for links to next year’s offerings here.
Speaking of webinars, Dr. William Graves hosted our most recent archived presentation titled “Capturing Movies of Molecules Using Ultrafast X-rays”. Bill describes the compact x-ray free electron laser (C-XFEL) in his contribution to this newsletter. It will be housed in the new copper-clad building on the ASU campus. Long-term, we hope to offer the unique capabilities of the C-XFEL to external users of the NCI-SW….watch this space.