STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Welcome, everyone, to the PPD seminar. Let me introduce John Luigi Barton, our speaker today. He received a degree in engineering, physics, and a PhD in Materials Engineering from Ecole Polytechnique of Montreal.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: He was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Material Science and Metrology at the University of Cambridge from 93 to 98.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: He joined the Materials Technology Laboratory of National Resources Canada in 1998 as a research scientist. In 2001, he moved to the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at McMahonstale University.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: where we… he held a Tier 2 and then a 1 Canada Research Chair in Electron Microscopy of NoScale materials.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: He… his research is worldwide recognized by receiving numerous awards, a medal, and an honorary.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: lecture. You can consult our Indigo page as well. He's fellow of the Microscopic Society in America.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: and fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He established the Canadian center for Helicon Microscopy, a national facility for ultra-high resolution microscopy, and was the director
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: there for over 11 years. In May 2019, he became the science director at the Canadian Light Source.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And the synchrotron, while continuing to hold his academic component.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: he has been a guest editor of special issues of microscopy and electrochemistry journals, and he's an editorial… on the editorial board of the Elsevier Journal.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Micron and materials.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Today, none.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: He was appointed as the Chief Executive Opticide the Diamond Light Source.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: the UK's National Synchrotron facility in October 2023.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And today, Thanksgiving, our seminar, so let's welcome…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: First of all, thank you for inviting me for this seminar, and for organizing the logistics here. It's a pleasure to be here, to give this presentation.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: when I was discussing the possible titles or topics of the presentation, I wasn't exactly sure why I would be invited to a particle physics department talk, so I gave some options, and the one seemed to be
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: maybe more commonly interested, perhaps, is to talk about Diamond a little bit, and also the upgrade we're doing on the Diamond 2, which I'm sure you heard about.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So the outline of the presentation is as follows. I'll give a little bit of background on myself, not the way it was introduced, but more on the science I've been doing as a… initially as an academic, mostly as an academic.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then, give some updates on, what the work at Diamond, what we do in at Diamond, in terms of the science, and describe the science technical case for the upgrade of the facility, and then updates on this large project. I'm sure you're interested in knowing where we are.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Like, as a, as a material scientist and engineer, and physicist in the background, I had the opportunity over, like, more than 30 years.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Work, in, in materials, opportunity to study, quite a breadth.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: level of materials analysis, working with,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: some projects, very in-depth, with several PhD students following one after the other, working on structural materials, the area of plasmonics, health, looking at biological structures, such as bones.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, technique development, this is where most of my work has been, in developing energy loss spectroscopy as a technique for… to study the electronic properties of materials. And probing with this technique
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Some fundamentals, materials, politization issues, like superproductivity, looking at magnetism.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And so on. So it's quite broad.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Area of applications.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And I did this in particular mostly with a lot of PhD students, postdocs, working in, I would say, 4 or 5 different classes of materials, functional oxide. For example, on the top, some work in the area of superconductivity, understanding.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: understanding the… Localization of calls… I mean, the physical pointer.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I think I'll… I'll try to manage otherwise people online. So, looking at, electron holds, in superconductors, looking at charge state.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: changes in battery materials. I also work in the area of energy materials, looking at batteries, catalysis, how these materials evolve as you cycle them multiple times, looking at in-situ techniques, how materials grow inside a microscope in conditions that
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Try to simulate what happens in real data, realistic conditions, and so on.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I also worked for many years with several PhD students, one after the other, in the area of cosmonics, looking at electron resonances, and solid how an electron being would generate these resonances and would lose energies corresponding to the particular resonance energies of the electron gas in the solid.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Looking at novel materials, and, and even, phonons, excitation in solids.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And finally, a broad area is the area of semiconductors, where, with my group, we study
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: point defects, chemical modulation at the atomic level when you dope materials, and looking at screens, semiconductors, and finally, more recent work has been in the area of using AI and machine learning to interpret spectra so that
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: another expert, unfortunately, will be able to be as good as somebody who has worked for 30 years in the area interpreting energy loss spectra, and using these techniques to denoise data and get information. And a final example is the area using electromagnets
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: to look at phonon excitation, even looking at dispersion of phonons in solids. All this, through a variety of imaging and spectroscopy techniques, mostly due to the fact that, Adamano mentioned, I developed a microscopy center and established soon after I arrived
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: at McMaster University, in 2001, submitted a proposal, which got funded, and it was created, essentially, with multiple funding applications, a center which is really, known internationally for the quality of the work instrumentation, starting pretty much from, from nothing at the time.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, on that, let me start the talk and say a little bit about diamond. So, this picture was taken is an aerial view, those of you who joined more recently, of the diamond… well, the campus, essentially, with diamond in the foreground.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, was taken late in the summer. We can see some of the recent construction, including the damn extension building, which I will talk about it later.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, what is, happening at Diamond? What is Diamond? It's one of the largest facilities that's been developed over the last.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: 40 years. It's actually maybe surprising to some of you who work within SDFC, we are a product company, so we're a not-for-profit company formed as a joint venture between the government, through SDFC and UKRI, and also the Welcome Trust. So 18, 14% of our funding comes from
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: the, the, the charity, the Welcome Trust.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Which is also very helpful in terms of the flexibility in the way we operate. We have several advantages in operating as a private company compared to being under SKC for the flexibility it provides to us.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: In terms of the funding, the procurement, and things like that. So, that's a very important point.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We should emphasize, and I know some of the facilities on campus would like to be like that in terms of the flexibility, so that's why I mentioned this. We have about 14,000 users, 8,000 single or unique users on an annual basis, coming from
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: UK and around the world. About 75% from the UK, the rest is from Europe and around the world.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We have about 750 staff and full complement, core complement.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then we have about 110, which are supported by the Diamond Project.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, the rest is supported through, research grant, which we can apply to and fund, postdoc students and current positions.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: What is interesting, as compared to other synchron facilities, we have an output split between life science and physical science, which is almost the same, in terms of publications.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And that's interesting because a lot of the synchrotrons have been built and run mostly by chemists, physicists initially, originally.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And I think what is… has been unique at Darwin is having very… living in… in the UK, being in the UK, where there's a very strong life sciences.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: community, essentially, sparked a lot of the capabilities that we have now available, which are unique by world standards in the area life sciences, and that is shown by the output that we have.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: In physical… in the life sciences. We have a very strong investment program which provides, support for companies. About 5% of our funding comes from industry.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And we're obviously located in a very nice facility. I'm very privileged to work on campus here, because I can work with colleagues at ISIS and the CLF
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: In developing a proposal, and also across the street, we are working very closely with a dozen planting, and we have, several publications
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Just since inception of the RFI.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Obviously, you know, the conference. What I should mention is that we were developed over three different phases, so Phase 1B lines that were full complement at the time when the facility became operational for users in 2007.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Then we added some V9s in 2012 as Phase 2, and then more V9s in 2020.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, the, Diamond 2 project, which I'll describe a bit more later, is currently, in progress, and it, in principle, will be completed in 2030, but there are lots of things already are on the go for that project.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, I think I can go quickly. So, we use a synchrotron, VIN accelerator booster, then a storage ring to, to generate light, and then we use, the… this light from infrared to the hard X-rays to do experiments, much brighter than the
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: facility in Dysbury, and sea control irrigation facility, several orders of magnitude.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: in terms of brightness, we like it. I don't necessarily like it myself, but it's the 10B that I drive in the sun, but that's apparently the language that is used in the community also do that for the general public.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I will give more details on the brightness of the facility currently compared to the diamond stream of data. So what we can do using at least broad spectrum of energies in different areas of the spectrum, so going from, far infrared to mid-infrared, looking at,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: molecular signatures of, trying to interpret signals coming from exoplanets, collected from the James Webb telescope, for example, so trying to understand what happens… what are these molecular signatures.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Down to, looking at detection of, explosives, looking at, the optical properties of, atmospheric pollutants, and so on.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Then going to higher energy, or even low energy, looking at plasmonics, molecular imaging, trying to get, molecular signatures of biological structure, for example, trying to separate, in food, for example, or seeds, liquids between liquids and fats, and, and starches.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then, going to high energies, we can study the electronic structure of materials, looking at furniture surfaces, and then, some work we're doing on plants, imaging, looking at distribution of minerals in seeds or food in general.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then we obviously work also in advanced materials, biomedical imaging, and industrial research. So, this broad spectrum really enables a lot of the research that has a lot of impact, scientific impact, but also societal impact.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And I think what… this is what is really unique about synchronos City in general, is that the breadth of application is quite, impressive.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We have, in particular, about 35 instruments and beamlines, and you can see here
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: the distribution, so we group these bean lines in different areas, so in macromolecular crystallography, so structural biology, essentially. There's work, again, in self-convex matter, which we can characterize, along with biological cryo-imaging in the area of life sciences, so these are three groups.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: in the area of life sciences, and the other groups are more on the physical sciences. But the V lines, whether it's diffraction, or imaging or spectroscopy V9, they're used for all sorts of applications. They're not exclusive for physical science, life sciences. For example, one B9
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: which is, heavily used for broader range application. I-18, so this micro-focus spectroscopy, is used for looking at
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: ancient paintings, to minerals in foods, to, Alzheimer's disease, tissues that have been exposed to, well, that come from Alzheimer's disease patients.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And all the big lines, obviously, some of them are more focused, for example, the area of micro-focus, molecular crystallography.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Would be used mostly for structural biology work. But otherwise, it's quite a breadth of techniques from different energies, so even different type of materials, or different properties of materials.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: In addition to that, we also have, the, cryo-electron microscopy facility. This is really to complement what you can do with, structural biology.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: With X-ray techniques, so X diffraction, and now the field is moving for very large molecules, it's moving to using cryo-electron microscopy to look at other structural proteins.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, this, these instruments here are in a, in a separate building, which is, so this is a sketch, really, the synchrotron, we have the diamond house, we have here, separate buildings, which, one of them is housing,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It's housing the cryo-electromicroscopy and the microscopy for physical science instruments, and then we have also, some imaging VIN lines that are long VIN lines, which go across the street from, the synchrotron, the teleimeter.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, very, comprehensive, facility, including…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: In the research complex, the protein membrane laboratory, which is extensively used to, to prepare samples that then would go and be studied with structural biology techniques, such as
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: X-ray, diffraction. And then we also have the crystallization facility, also located in the research complex, where
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: A user sends solution with the proteins, and then they recrystallize them, and then they're… they're…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: then, put into the beamlines for, for imaging or for diffraction techniques. And then we have two other labs, the Optic Materials Lab and the optics fabrication facility, which I'm going to describe, as special
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Facilities, and maybe you're not aware are available.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Right, so also in terms of impact, as I said, because we have a very broad range of techniques, and we can study a lot of materials, obviously, we support a lot of the
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Sustainable Development Goals, 13 out of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Goals, and this is an example of the area of applications. I think the size of the pie shape here is really almost arbitrary, because some topics like energy, for example, would also fit into the chemistry.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Same for physics, related to energy when you look at solar cells. So it really depends how users select the keywords. But you can see, nevertheless, that there's a lot of, work, as I said, in terms of output, in the area of biology and medicines.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And a lot of work in the area of development of therapeutics and understanding the structure of vaccine, and developing vaccine has been done in the MXB9s, the macromolecular crystallography B9s, especially very busy during the COVID pandemic.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And in terms of output, we have about 14,000 at 600, I think, at the latest, peer-reviewed publications since, the, the start, 2007, 15,000… more than 15,000 protein data-bound deposited this is
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: This is, the data that's been deposited in a central, space, where all the facilities or users, deposited, written up,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: From the solution of the structure of proteins, of viruses.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: What is interesting is that Diamond has been involved in, in, 300 policy documents that have been citing work at Diamond, and the, institution that I've, cited work
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: of Diamond are very important institutions, such as the World Health Organization, European Union, of course, the UK government.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, the U.S. center of disease control. So that's, that's very important in terms of impact on the work.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And this is some of the work that's been done and has been cited, by these policy documents. So I think it's very important to highlight that it's not just publications.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: its publication with significant impact. And that's been also about $2.6 billion, worth of, economic impact. This is a slide, earlier on that's being developed, showing where the areas, of this economic impact are being from
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: protein data bank deposits to publications, to software and industrial income as well. So it's a very relevant possibility that has impact for the UK economy as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But some highlights of the capabilities. So, you know, if you do science, we're using green lines, and I want to show some of the features that are also important, and maybe you may be interested in, because some of them can use them.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So the first one is this multi-layer fabrication facility, which is now fully operational. It took a few years, but now, well, last year, we received this multi-layer deposition system.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It's, as you can see, it's just attached to the synchrotron, so this is used, essentially, to develop our own in-house optical components. So, if you need to use mirrors in the beamlines.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: or monochromators, or each deposit very thin films to enhance the reflectivity of these optical components. We can do that now with this multi-year deposition system.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And I'm showing here, this… this is the instrument. Actually, it's a quite large instrument, and it can obtain objects as large as 1 meter, so this is really useful for optical components.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Which could be, not just for X-ray, but also for neutron, and people in the ICCPR are also very interested in what we can do.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And also, what we have, what is called the iron beam figuring, capability, so this is what is called for deterministic polishing mirror, so if you have… you deposit a film.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: over a polished surface, for example, of silicon, the roughness of this surface is critical. So, you can go, you can measure the roughness, you can go with an atomic force microscope, looking at measuring the local roughness, and go then with an ion beam.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: and remove some of the roughness, or flatten the specimen locally. And this is really also a very unique instrument.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Which gives us the capabilities to go to have a…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: a very controlled roughness that is in the order of a couple of angstroms, essentially, right? In a deterministic way. So we can control locally, which is really very powerful. So if you know of anybody, or I know a lot of companies maybe don't use,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: this type of component, but if we know people are interested, I think we… we would be able… open to collaborations.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Another, laboratory which is, very, very important, I think. It's not used as much as, we would like, but it was funded by EPSRC, a special code.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And it's the active materials lab.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The advantage of this lab is that you can come with a radioactive sample coming from a nuclear reactor, for example. The activity is controlled enough, it's the sample with the right size, in terms of those.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: then you can repair it in the facility. We have a wet lab, a dry lab, heating capability, so that ultimately what we can do is put a sample in the beamline.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Look, modifying the sample heating, or… or putting, just a tent… doing a pencil test experiment on that radioactive material, and then we… we can do experiments that are relevant, for the, nuclear materials community.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, then we have other instruments that have more recently been installed, which really provide a complementary capability to what a standard, imaging technique, such as fluorescence and so on. So this one is… one of them is the
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: X-ray emission spectrometer on one of the B9, so we can use multiple techniques with high energy resolution to look at the, the chemical environment of atoms, and this is very important to understand the impact of contaminants, for example.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: One example is the contaminants in green tea, arsenic, for example. You can use spectroscopy to understand whether you have arsenic 5 or arsenic 3, which is really relevant in terms of the health impact.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Another, recent instrument building house, developing house from our engineering team is the very high-resolution extra emission spectrometer.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Where you can really enhance, the visibility of the edges. So you can measure with a lower background, with a much higher resolution. You can measure the, again, the chemical environment, or determine the shape of the spectrum with much better resolution.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, compared to fluorescent techniques, which the resolution is in the order of 100, if not more.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And you can go down to the physical list of these emission deadlines.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then in the area of structural biology, so initially, well, usually the techniques to study, proteins are for X-ray diffraction techniques, essentially being used over
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Very beginning of synchrotons.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then, as I mentioned earlier, in the last decade or so, there's been a growth in terms of the use of electron microscopy to study larger proteins, and there's really a trend where more and more structures are solved with electron microscopy compared to X-ray retraction techniques. However.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Some crystals, so if you look at the sizes of the biological structures, some structures.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: That, can be studied with, with electron microscopy.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: are too small, in terms of the size to be detected with X-rays, and the structures that are usually used, with X-ray techniques, are, they're, they're… the crystal might be too small to be able to be probed with X-ray techniques, so there's a gap in terms of
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The, the diffraction techniques that need to be covered using
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: two different, well, one technique in particular, which is the high-voltage X-ray, imaging, diffraction techniques, which is being funded with the Wellcome Trust. So this is a high-voltage, million-volt elect electron microscope.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: That can study smaller crystals with the same, structural resolution as extra refraction techniques, but we can study, actually, smaller samples.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: that are…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: bigger in terms of size than what you can study with electromicroscopy. So we cover, with electron microscopy, a broader spectrum, and these high-voltage electromycrosy. We can cover a broader spectrum of structures.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And because you can use, also, electron imaging techniques, you can do tomography, x-ray tomography, and so on. So, this is, I think it's important as a new development that is happening at Daimon.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then, let me talk about now, Diamond 2. So,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We obviously do a lot of, already a lot of good science. We have really state-of-the-art, beam,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: bean lines, Obviously, the competition elsewhere is, is, obviously also moving fast.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And there's been, recently, maybe the last, 10 years or so, the demonstration of a brighter, storage ring, so brighter beams, using the fourth generation, synchrotron, or lattice.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: accelerator.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: lattice. And, of course, Diamond, in order to be competitive, needed also to follow this trend going to fourth generation machine, which are now being demonstrated in Sweden, in Brazil, in Advanced Photon Source, in Chicago.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, we are in the race as well, and we basically made the case to the funders in the UK
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: To develop a fourth-generation synchrotron machine.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: On the same side, taking advantage of everything we already had.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But changing the storage ring to be a fourth-generation storage ring, to be able to have brighter beams.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: More coherence that would enable more, better resolution and different imaging techniques, and also, if you have brighter beams, we can also have really speed analysis for very small probes.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So that really justified our motivation to apply for funding to the Diamond, to the fund, for, moving to a fourth generation, machine.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, this was really, developed, this proposal was developed over 10 years.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, so, and this project would bring to Diamond, first of all, a new
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: a new machine, a fourth generation storage lane, new infrastructure, the diamond extension building, which I'll describe later, new bean lines, and we'll also describe some of these new bean lines, and then also revamped completely all the data
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: and computation infrastructure to be able to take advantage of the brighter beings, the faster detectors, and so on. So that really is a comprehensive program, not just to replace the storage ring, but also taking advantage of already what we do
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: and go beyond, especially in the area of data, so we can take advantage of new developments as well. And those developments really enabled new science, looking at protein structures with better time sensitivity, looking at time-resolved experiments, for example.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Looking at fragments that are attached to the molecules.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Maybe the tag key. Okay.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: these fragments here. So, if you look at therapeutics, if you want to develop new drugs that are affecting how proteins, operate.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Then you would be able to use these new beamlines to take advantage of the faster, throughput, and, so you can do… develop, the chemotherapy much faster, or do some magnitude faster.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: time frame. New imaging techniques, so you can, because of the coherence of the being, you can use, the details, more details on the diffraction data to use what I call, typography technique, so you analyze the reciprocal space, behind
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Alright, so sometime it works, sometimes…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Right? You analyze these speckled patterns here.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: and really reconstruct your object with much better resolution that you would use in simple imaging techniques. And then, because of also some decisions we made in terms of the structure.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: of the outbreak, we can do… you see more in-star experiments, you know, ESC samples, and do imaging in the area of life sciences and looking at, magnetic domains with much better sensitivity as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, essentially, it's not just to have a smaller being, it's to do new science, and I think that's very important to realize. This is how we justify
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: the facility, the upgrade. And the funding is described as follows, about 518 million pounds. 300 million would be, coming from, UKRI Infrastructure Fund.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The Wellcome Trust will provide, again, 14%, and then, the rest $180 million is from our operating budget, which is very, very challenging, particularly at this time, where funding is very tight.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, this is how the project is being funded. In terms of the split, in more details, maybe you're interested in that.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: A lot of it goes to the machine, so replacing the storage rink, a lot of infrastructure surrounding it.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And the booster ring. And then, the other component is on the beam lines, so developing 3 new bean lines, and, making sure that we can take the beam.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: In the other P lines, which is not trivial. Then 45 million pounds is on software, then 55 in the area of the, building infrastructure, including the new building, and then some contingency, and so on.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Right, so how did we get to that point? So, there was a lot of work starting in 2015 to get, the case, developed, and, so we developed a science case, a conceptual design report, and then a technical report.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: and a number of workshops with a lot of participants from the user community in the UK, looking at different areas of research.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: to…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: built the science of the kit. So it was really built on the science we can do within the facilities, rather than, we need that fourth generation storage in, because those people have it too. So that's… that's been very important. It's a lot of work.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: the Diamond community, obviously, I arrived, but everything was outfunded, so, so there's a lot of work that has been, done by, a lot of people before I arrived to… to make sure that we would have… we would be able to do this.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And so you can see, the timelines here, you know, from the vision, to the… the work of the Science Advisory Committee, the community, provide a conceptual design report, a technical design report submitted, working with the Diamond Board.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: working with the community, and then the application process took actually 2 years, and was funded in 2023, and arrived in October. So, I was, very fortunate to come at that, although,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Building it is actually not that easy as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, what does it consist? And maybe, if you are more on the other side, you'd be interested. So, this is the…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: the current, design, Lattice, design. So we have,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Bending… large bending, well, we have bending magnets, we have, exopoly quadricals,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Large and insertion devices, so those elements are still the same, but the size of these elements and the number of elements is actually significantly increased.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And instead of having what I call straights, some straights, what we did is to change some number of straights.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: which could have simply just a beam propagation to replace them with insertion devices. So, we increased the number of insertion devices to grab more beam lines.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, and then there were, other components that needed to be included to be able to maintain the electron being.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Smaller than what it is with a third generation machine.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, with this kind of lattice design, the emittance, which is the parameter that is usually used as a measure of the quality of the being, which is how divergent, how small it is, is moving from 2.7 nanometer rad to 140 km rad.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, so there were also decisions, to be made, so to cut for slower emittance, that's important. We give better coherence.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: increase the capacity of the beam lines, so that was another parameter. We wanted to have more beamlines.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And also going to high energy, from 3.0 GV to 3.5 GV. And the reason for that, even if it was an expense of… the remittance was not as small.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: This was decided to be able to do science at high energy, which is more in line with what the youth community really wanted to do.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, so these are the elements that were included in the parameters in terms of the design. So that was very important to not just optimize the emittance.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: and coming from another facility in the past, I think you can really make mistakes by really focusing on one parameter, rather than looking at the overall picture of the facility. What is the impact for users? So I think it was really well done, by Diamond, in terms of the design.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, right.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So what does it mean in terms of the gain? So this plot, maybe it's a bit complicated to look if you, just at first glance, but what you have here is, on the horizontal scale, the energy, so, of the beamlines.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Right? And then these bars here are the different beam B lines, and they're shifted horizontally just for… to spread them out. Simply, it's nothing to do with the gain factor. The gain factor relates only to the curves
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The… the curve that you see here.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Go back first. These curves here, the gain factors. So, for low energy gain lines, we don't have a significant gain.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Compared to the current facility, but when you go to higher energies, at 3.5GB, you can see that there's a significant gain for a lot of the B9s at high energy that we have at Diamond. So that's why the selection was done, to go to higher energies.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: to maximize the impact of these larger number of bean lines. So we cut more bean lines going to a higher energy than if we optimize just the brightness.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And also, what we did, replaced some of the superconducting insertion devices with permanent magnets to reduce the cost. Although we go too high energy, so it's more expensive because of the energy costs.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: You can ask me questions about that. So, more quantitative, this is the number, so we have a factor of 80, 40 KV and higher when you go to higher beam, beamline, but this is not, there's only a few beam lines that go to 100 and plus, KV.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: the energy being high, but otherwise you see the improvement. So it may not be very significant for
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: a lot of the low energy being high, but it's very significant in terms of the brightness and
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: the, coherence at the high limit, as I'm going to show. Okay, this is what really essentially means, that, this lower emittance means that we can have a smaller beam.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: That is more parallel. Also the significant changes in terms of the vacuum, the quality of the vacuum in the design, so there's less capturing.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: more parallel being, smaller being, which essentially increases the brightness of this beam.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, so these are the details. I don't know if you're interested, but essentially, we remain with the same current. The circumference doesn't change very much. The same beam current.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, the emittance, you can see there, and I think these are essentially what is most important is the emittance and, the number of straights that is also changing.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But this is, essentially, the ripeness and coherence.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So the green… the blue curve is the current, brightness and the coherence, for the current facilities, the diamond
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: By going to, to the Diamond 2 lattice, you can see significant, decrease, let's say, for the, for the,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Brightness, more, obviously, at higher energies, so you can see orders of magnitude increase, for some of the… these are calculations… some, insertion devices.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So you can see there's already a magnitude increase in terms of the brightness, so more photons
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: For a less divergent being peril area. And then the coherent fraction, this is,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: also increase significantly, particularly high energy, so low energy, there's not a lot of change.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But at high energy, there's a significant change by order magnitude, which means that we can develop imaging techniques with better resolution at high energies.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So that's… that's an improvement.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: If we develop also these, new beamlines,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, 3 new, what are called, plug kits. This is developed from scratch. Essentially, we went back to the drawing board and said, what do we really need to do in new science? And 3 new V9, what was SWIFT, which is a SWIFT means, spectroscopy with, with, fast time scales.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So to do apparent experiments, so realistic experiments with fraction of a second, time resolution, through spectroscopy, particulate for energy materials. I'll show a slide on that.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The macromolecular crystallography being nice, so high throughput, because of the higher brightness of a smaller beam, more photons of a smaller beam. And then this coherence of the X-ray imaging technique, which is also brand new for a particular case of science.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then the other B9s, had to be changed in terms of going from
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: what I call bank magnets, so, very broad spectrum to insertion devices.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Insertion devices need to be specialized, and they provide still a broad spectrum of light, so they're special insertion devices, not just the undulator.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: for these beamlines, for beamlines, and then we need to have a significant change for some of the bend magnets, beamlines that need to provide a very, very broad spectrum.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Of light. so, particularly at lower, lower energy.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And they need to be changed simply to be able to take this beam. And then we have a number of V lines that need to be upgraded in a minor way. They remain where they are, no changes in the optics component, except they need to change some.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Some of the, the, the, upgrade, need to have upgrades to be able to take the light in an optimal way, so that's,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: also what needs to be done. So,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Right, I'll say a few words about the SWIFT V9, so, so spectrophically with fast, fast timescales.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, so the area of applications are from catalysis to, catalysis for,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: gas production to, fuel production, for CO2 conversion.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then some energy application battery, for example, how they charge and discharge. So, because of the time sensitivity of reactions, it was important to use a beamline with a special design
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: of a moleculator that can operate, with, sub-second, time resolution. So, this is not easy to do, but it's really where the users really want to go to this new science, with faster timescales.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The, so these are examples of, well, what we have in this beam lines, so different patches, some of them with a smaller beam, other ones with a larger beam, so different type of microstructure analysis.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Inter-parameter experiments, meaning that we want to operate in conditions that are realistic, I mean, in industrial processes. I think that's very important.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Whether it's in gas or liquid, or anti-chemical conditions.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then the coherence of X-ray imaging and refraction techniques is really to take advantage of this coherence of the beam for the techniques that are called pathography. So really, it's a technique that uses
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: the diffraction pattern, analyzing the full diffraction pattern, when you scan the beam and there's overlap between the beam.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I'm sorry, it's the hybrid.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, you can improve the resolution, beyond what is the BG diffraction limit.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: significantly below the diffraction limit. So that's one technique, which is used already at Diamond, but because of the coherence, we cannot maximize the impact. So this is what's important. Coherence is obviously also important for olography experiments.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then what's called coherent diffraction imaging, again, looking at the small details in the diffraction plane, to understand the structure and reconstruct the object, with much better resolution than you could do with other techniques.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: These are obviously complementary to other imaging techniques, like electron microscopy. With my background, I think we want to make sure that we do develop techniques because we can, but actually we do science that is relevant, and you can do it with x-rays in a better way than you can do with electrons. I think that's important, particularly for
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: what I bring in terms of, of expertise.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Then, with, with this small beam and spectroscopy capability, you can look at chemical state availability, you can look at magnetism.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, also different, imaging techniques, like tomography and laminography, so we can look at different types of samples.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It's not the same, you can look at larger objects in laminographically, so you… you… you tilt the sample around this axis, which enables, you to actually avoid, some of the, what I call, missing wedges when you do misfurner, so this minimizes the missing wedges in tomography techniques.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And a lot of, experiments, again, in situ temperature, magnetic field, electrical pump, gas, time resolution, and work developed in different types of environments.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And you can do this in a…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: very tiny samples in this case, depending on the end station, there are actually multiple end stations here. One of them is to be able to put the sample
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: in the BE9 and in the electron microscope, so you can look at exactly the same area. So, very complementary technique, so you don't start to invent the same thing and reinvent what an electron microscope can do. But you can get complementary information from the microscope into the actual VE line, using particularly this coherence of the electron beam.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then there's a significant effort, in terms of the, software and computation. I remember there's four quadrants in the upgrade of Diamond 2. So, the storage ring, which I talked about, the new beamlines, and then there's also software and computing.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Because of the increased photon brightness, we will be able to do new type of experiments that we couldn't do before, so new science means that we will have actually much more data. Whether because you study a sample as it evolves with time.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: for example, the Swift V9, or whether you want to study more samples, for example, the K04 V9 for structural biology.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, this combined with faster detectors to do this time-dependent type of experiments, you will actually very quickly need to have a different approach to store the data.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: and process the data. So we, we are in the plans to also build a 1MW data center, just adjacent to the building I'm going to show in the next couple of slides, the Darwin Extension Building.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And we currently are in the design phase for this building, and it's essential to be very clear because of… we want to process the data directly online, other data is actually generated by instruments.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And for the reason is really the new detectors are shown here, new automations, more samples, and then using these emerging techniques, you generate petabytes and petabytes of data every single time you analyze one sample.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, in order to do that, we need to have a new infrastructure, we need to have a different type of saving the data, new architecture for the data processing pipelines.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And so we need to be able to make sure that we are able to take this data
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: save it in a more effective way, don't necessarily save everything, but just to be able to do some filter… added filtering, or some processing directly online before it's stored and archived, which I think is a…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: rocks now, and I'm sure you have the same problem in particle physics. You probably are borrowing more and more data, and and you have these problems as well. So, these emerging techniques will have more data generated.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: then we justified having this data center just next to a synchrotron. So we could develop more automation, use more machine learning techniques, and so on.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, so where are we in terms of the, the projects? So we, remember, we have,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: about $500 million, including the contingency. These are where we are in terms of procurement, so we are about 25% in terms of the spending and in terms of the progress of the project.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: You can see the… where the money has been spent.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: procurement of…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: magnets, electromagnets, detect… detectors, I'm not sure we already bought some of them, but there's a lot of, mostly on the machine side, and, of course, the personnel is also included as… in the UK as a country of origin.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then the,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The other component is that I'm an extension building. I don't know if some of you park, behind, on 7 Road.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: You would have seen, the Diamond Extension Building.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: This is the picture taken in the area of view before it was built.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: You can see the drawings, and obviously, now it's almost, accessible to us. We, we don't have the formal access. We still need some paperwork, but essentially the work has been essentially finished. So we… we're going to take, ownership, within, a few weeks.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: from today.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And one of the reasons is also to try to consolidate some of the…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: space we have in R79, for example, so move things, across. So the advantage of having this building is that we can build on-site all the components, and then store them in the… so this is where,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: This is where the component will be built, on the ground floor, there's some offices and also some lab space on the top, the first floor, and then this is where the component will be stored.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Before we shut down the machine and we replace everything.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We have, some parking space, so this is how it looked a few weeks ago.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And I think I have some space. This is how it looks, about a month ago, so it's practically finished. You can see nicely polished floor before it's moving in. But these are important areas where we will do assembly and construction of the components.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then we have this Diamond 2, extension building, the depth tool, what it's called, of storage, which is essentially just a flat floor and nothing much.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: pelts available. We also started construction of some of the V9, so the patches, that's where the… all the optical component would be. So, essentially, the hutches are already pretty much being built, and, you can see some of them here. So, actually, things are moving. It's going, quite well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, this is where we are in terms of timeline, so that we are just about November. We expect the completion of the Diamond Extension building a few weeks from now. It's a bit delayed, like all buildings, but this has not an impact on the… on the project.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then, we'll start the assembly of components, in a few months, in March, and then, you can see here some of the timelines, essentially. But important timeline is that we will switch up the
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: in December 2027. This date is really also coordinated with other synchron facilities, so that we don't all go to the same suppliers.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: For asking components, so we're trying to minimize the demand. And that has been actually paid off, because we really got very competitive prices for the components.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We are down, or dark, for about 18 months for the users, but we'll be coming back after the commissioning of the D9. We'll take the first users in January 2030.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: These are some of the pictures of, well, how it was before. We have a movie, which is the first thing to see.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then some of the prototypes, where we demonstrate the concept of this new type of lattice, making sure everything works, and it can be actually maintained. This is very important. Cannot see everything on a CAD design.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, I think the optical… the watches, as I mentioned. And on that, I think, in summary, we… we're doing a lot of good science, at Diamond already, as it is now, but we obviously need to be in paying the cities as competitive as possible for the user community.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We need to, so, and this is done through an upgrade of the Diamond project, which will make climate, competitive, again, compared to the city of… that have already moved to a fourth-generation machine.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I've highlighted some examples of the work that we'll be doing on new building lines, and hopefully you can see that the project has been moving well, and
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: On that, I'm… This is how the building looked a few weeks ago.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: On that, if you have any questions, I'm here to…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Questions from the room?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Yeah, Bill.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, one of the highlights of the upgrade is the image reduction, if the highlight, as I take it. I vaguely remember from Diamond 1 construction
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: the effort that went into digging the homes for support pillars, I thought that earth vibration was still a limit on the emittance of the first machine. So,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: what we've done, we measure vibration, and the calculations show that it's good for solidity, and also we have a very important feedback system, significantly upgraded from the current one, to be able to do it. So it's a very interesting point, I think you're totally right.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And when I was looking in that source, vibration is definitely an issue, you know, having trains away.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: As an example, the Kamchata earthquake a few months ago, where we… maybe you've seen the news, but we detected the vibration, and we… That's still the LHC. And we were able to actually keep the beam, without being done. So, the really fast of the feedback is key.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: significant effort there. And it was interesting that other facilities have not used a passive feedback, and it is a problem.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Right, so you're totally right. But based on the experience, and that's why we do so much feedback, we seem to be able to not have that as a limitation.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I'm slightly concerned about using P16 into what might be I-16 in the future.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Because it's a very versatile emergency. Is there a…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Is there something that will replace the…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Very easily available, I wouldn't say.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Compared to other facilities. This is the developer… B16 turning into an induct… insertion device, V1.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Because the assumption is that the demand will go up for being at P16.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Yeah, so, the insertion device does actually provide the same spectrum. Yes, yeah. But they will provide higher intensity, so suddenly people will have more demand for a beamline like V16, which used to be a test beamline, and I don't know whether it will still be in the future.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I think the intent is to still use it as a test beamline.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I don't know what the expected demand will be, but we know there is a demand for testing, because it's a lot of other work that is done, so it's… I haven't…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: in the technical… I look at the TDR, the details, and I'm impressed by the set improvement in terms of performance, right?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So… I don't know whether that will create the demand, but…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: it's been designed, and it's being always operated as a test beamline, in a way, and the demand, the priority will go to that beamline for those type of applications, rather than
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Using for something else.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I think what I can see
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: There's some beamline where we have a factor… a low subscription of factor 5,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: That way, we need to prioritize them for perhaps changing some of the configuration of other beam lights to be able to take some of those users and put them
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: for example, some spectroscopy green line, like B18 and I18… B18 in particular is… it's a factor of 5.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So that means that we need to care more about those beamlines, and perhaps
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: reconfigure some of the other beamlines to be able to take, or have new beamlines. Maybe that's very simple. To do spectroscopy, you don't need
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I know in Canada, we developed a V9, it was, at the time, maybe 2 million pounds of dollars.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: very simple optical components, you don't need a very fine beam to do bulk spectroscopy, right? And I think I can see some of the things that we could do more in that area, to take the demand, rather than going to a very sophisticated V9, like B18, so I would see that more a path forward.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Are you using the B16? So, we've used B16 a lot for sensor testing. Okay. Sensor testing.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I've used I-12, and then I've used equipment at I-18.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But I'm less worried about those, because they will keep fulfilling the same purpose. Yes.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: No, but you're right, the performance of D16 will be significantly improved, and yes, there may be a more demand, but I think the purpose will remain the same.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And if it's not used… if it is brighter and the experiments are shorter, well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: there's more capacity, right? I don't know that they would be, because there's a test team lines, and people need to spend more time to actually do the thing, rather than… like, data acquisition isn't usually the limit. Yes, yeah, yeah. I can understand.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: What questions?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Yes, Chris, I noticed that you mentioned on one of your slides single-particle imaging. Yes. And, you know, I mean, I know there's been a long
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: saga for Cryo year and doing absolutely wonderful progress in that, and also LCLS and others trying, but not quite getting there, and so on. Where do synchron stand in that area at the moment? And also, maybe a word about
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: XFLs, which on the UK Expil, is that anywhere in this business, or is that… I… I don't know. I don't know. But I can tell you, from the XFL, that we have been doing some experiments on the very fast B9s.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: With the same type of sample delivery system. And we actually get really good time result experiments, so… so I don't know what is demand from the community, but I know we've been surprised to see how much you can do in terms of time result using a current demand, and it will be better.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: In terms of single particle, so there is a,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Richard Henderson, maybe you know, Nobel Prize, in cryo-electromicroscopy, developed during pioneers.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And he's plotting as a function of time the number of structures solved by X-rays and the number of structures solved by electron microscopy. And X-ray is still a little bit above, but the projection is within a few months.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The electromagnoscopy will take over in terms of numbers.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: however, it's very clear for us, the trend, we still are going up in terms of MX.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We still have users coming. We still, for example, this fragment screening, so this,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: beanite we have with what's called IO41, which is a fragment screening beanite. Look at where weakens would attach to the molecules, protein molecules.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The demand is going up, and there's no way that the capacity of the…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: X-ray at the electron microscope will be, there is some work in that space, but the resolution given the structure, I think, is still
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: better for X-rays, and the throughput is definitely still better for X-rays. Although we, we have developed a very good throughput, pipeline in the, electron crystallography… sorry, electron, single particle, electron crystallography is different.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, I expect that
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Electron might take over, but it's not…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It's not dead. On the contrary.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I think… so, on the organizational side, so…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: You know, being a private company, you can do things in it.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Yeah, you can do things in a sort of more dynamic way, pure and stuff's easier. I mean, the downside is that you end up constructing a kind of parallel organization to SGFC,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: well-being. I mean, there's… there must be things you have… capabilities that you have within Diamond that are then matched by things that we have within SCSC, and often one of the things I find is Diamond, it's difficult to find out what's going on and who to talk to, and often when you do get down to it, you find that things like the data acquisition.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: is quite similar to some of the stuff we're different possible physics, but getting various connections is great. So, in fact, we are working on trying to be more, harmonized, more connected,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: with Roger Eckeston, Dr. Love, we have, really want to make sure there is less duplication of things.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Obviously, when I talk to my colleague at CLF and ISIS, they all would like… like Diamond.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Of course, it's difficult, because of, again, financial constraints, and obviously, there's always pressure for them to be like SDSC, right?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And I think the important point is that there are advantages even for ISIS and NCLF to work with Diamond. Some things can work better.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And some people who work at SDFC, they work at Diamond, they do find that things are more effective, and so on.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: There is obviously a cost, and we are under pressure.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So what we have to do, and there's…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: in a way… I think there's pressure, particularly on a person like me, to work closely together.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And we do our… we are working closely, more closely together, already.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: In the area of AI machine learning, I developed a sort of a draft of a proposal, working very closely with the facilities as a campus.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And… and I think… I think there's very goodwill from Diamond's side to be working at more than 4.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: At the same time, there's obviously pressure, and it's very clear that we don't want to lose the advantage, but we do want to work more closely together so that we do take advantage of what we can do. In some areas where we do much better.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: it's this understanding, maybe we should work with Diamond and offer some of the capabilities that we have, that instead of you developing some, maybe Diamond should develop, and working with you, having, you know, joint resources, and we are already starting to do that.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, it's a very sensitive point, it's very timely, but I can tell you things are changing compared to two years ago.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But I will try to protect as much as possible the advantages that we have now.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Sort of related to the last question, you're building a new computer center. We have a computer center.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Is it the timing? What's the reason? Okay, so initially, the idea was to build a center and contribute to the… there was an RCC, right? Those would be involved in the RAW Computing Center, maybe? I don't… maybe I don't know exactly what the title, but it was RCC.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And unfortunately, the timing was such that,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The project was canceled at the time where we needed to make a decision, and so it was very unfortunate.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It was obviously pressure, but we justified in the sense that there is still a demand in the future, so there's still opportunity in the future.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And at the same time, the…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The… the proximity, we felt that was key, to be able to process really, really fast the data.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: with a minimum latency, so that we could do a lot of online work directly. But we did… I think the timing wasn't great.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We didn't seem to pause.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The campus? I think the computer building is basically full, because they're not getting a new building anymore. I think that the RCC, the pause.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: With unknown, timelines really made us decide, you know, we really need to go ahead.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And we know there's gonna be more demand. I don't know what the limitations are for you already, but
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: we know we… you're gonna be, out of space. We're gonna… we already are projecting we're gonna be out of space very quickly, so we needed to do it now, because
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Especially for microscopy, even during the dark period, we know we're gonna need, capacity.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So we needed to go.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: You were talking earlier about… sorry, I'm just chipping in… the potential synergies in data processing. We clearly
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: throw away most of our data, because we could possibly store it. Yeah. I think.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: light sources are scratching that surface, or have scratched that surface for a while. Yes. Other fields of science are starting to get to the point where they realize that you can't just keep everything, and that one day it'll do better. Is there work streams or something? I think if we,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I think the area, this area is very important. So, actually, things are evolving very quickly, because we are talking to DCIT with campus people, with SDFC, the ALC, with all… I think I'm talking about
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: This issue, right?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And it's not feasible to keep everything. I know some people have time what they keep because they can.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And it's… it's a problem, so we know we need to develop,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: you should have developed already a policy where, you know, there's a limit. If you develop techniques.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: on-site, and you think you can have access to all the space. No, you're going to be limited with this, and then you need to find ways to
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Use the space you have and not more.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I think when I came, it was really clear that we cannot afford to store everything.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It's a reality lock.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And I think this, this work together with ALC and scientific computing, we, I think, will…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Enable us, with better techniques, like more machine learning, denoising data.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And this is work I did on my own with my students. The noising is really important without necessarily losing information.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And see how far you can go. So there's a lot of work there.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: A bit related. How do you deal with your legacy data, from all the data you have taken so far? I guess at one point you make them public?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Or is it impossible, or how does it work, actually, in your area? It is a problem, all the legacy data.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So we are at the stage where
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We spend a few hundred K a year on tapes.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: On data that is not necessarily well
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: curator, and I'm exchanging with ALC at the moment, I have emailed from Paul Quinn yesterday about we need to do something about that.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: There should be a way to curate, maybe migrate some data that's curated in a space which is all curated there, and so on.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: There are topics, as we speak, that are significant of specific concern.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, okay, one of the arguments was, well, it's almost… if people want to look at their old data.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: is cheaper than doing an experiment, but I'm not sure anymore. If you look at the cost of running Diamond.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: In a custom for publication.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It's still… it's still advantageous to keep the data.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But I'm not sure it's a long-term solution.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Because it's very digital.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: That is actually a reused, right? Probably maybe for you as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: very little of the data they store is actually retrieved. Very little. They're talking about 1% of this range, which is…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It's expensive.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Questions on Zoom?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The last one completely offbeat.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Personal interest. Do you know anything about CLS?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: current status with LINA. Oh, okay. As of… I still get the update. So, as of yesterday, there was a message saying that they're taking, first, friendly users… Yes, yeah, that's right. So, they decided to keep, the LINAC as it is.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Not replace a component that was faulty, and live as long as possible with that.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Because otherwise, we don't know, there may be a problem. Anyway, so it's the risk of shutting down again, and maybe having more problems, and if it's working now, just keep it as it is.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So that's where… but it's obviously, yeah, not ideal, right?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: it.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Yeah. Oh, sorry, no different topic. So you build this diamond extension building, and then you construct everything there. You've got big cranes and stuff. What do you do afterwards? Okay.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Well, the… so this is gonna be a skill, because it's still… there's always work, and so we would retrieve outside stuff and moving, so yeah, that's the idea. On this side, we don't know yet. This is where we can work more with it and have space, right? So…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It's, it's open, open, open.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: maybe there's gonna be something else happening campus in the legal space, so I think it would…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: as CEO at the moment, I would see them… Good.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: No, we shouldn't.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: You could say the same, but yeah.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Okay, then this next one, so I've got Negan.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We couldn't have lunch in, let's say, 8 minutes in a boiler.