2006 Holiday Message from J. Stöhr

Dear Users, Colleagues and Friends of SSRL,

As we near the end of 2006, I would like to take a moment to send you my best wishes for a happy holiday and to reflect back on many high points from the past year.

During the FY2006 run (November 2005-August 2006), SPEAR3 provided very stable beam for 96.2% of the scheduled time and a total of 64,585 hours of beam were delivered on our 25 experimental stations. The significant over-demand for SSRL facilities is reflected by the fact that only half of the requested time could be accommodated. Of the approximately 500 active proposals, 345 different proposals received beam time at SSRL during the FY2006 run with >1,000 experimental starts involving ~1,700 researchers. Users consistently rate their overall scientific experience at SSRL very highly (92% ranked their experience as excellent or very good).

The FY2007 run got off to a good start in November 2006 and will run through August 6, 2007. The average uptime to date is ~96%, with 100% uptime for users during the last week alone.

SSRL continues to provide valuable scientific training experience for the future workforce, indicated by the large number of users who are undergraduate students, graduate students, or postdoctoral fellows (>57%). Since SSRL began user operation in 1974, users have reported 7,736 scientific publications based on research conducted at SSRL, including 790 student theses. In 2005 and in 2006 alone, users reported >650 publications, including so far 43 theses.

One exceptional achievement in 2006 was the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to Roger Kornberg, Professor of Structural Biology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, for his work in understanding how DNA is converted into RNA. Key to this understanding was the determination of the three-dimensional arrangement of the atoms in the RNA polymerase - in its "base" structure and caught in action snapshots - through the use of synchrotron radiation-based macromolecular crystallography. Kornberg and his group carried out a significant part of this research at SSRL's macromolecular crystallography beam lines, starting as early as 1991 but with the main work leading to the first published structure in the late 1990s.

During 2006, SSRL's Sub-Picosecond Pulse Source (SPPS) experiments concluded, as its home - the Final Focus Test Beam (FFTB) - was dismantled to make way for the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), the world's first x-ray free-electron laser. Several significant new discoveries and publications resulted from this pioneering endeavor. Two researchers working on the SPPS experiment jointly received the 2006 W. E. Spicer Young Investigator Award: Adrian Cavalieri (Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics) and David Fritz (SSRL). We also congratulate Mike Soltis and Bill Schlotter, recipients of the 2006 Farrel W. Lytle Award and the 2006 Melvin P. Klein Scientific Development Award, respectively. These awards were presented at the 33rd Annual SSRL Users' Meeting in October (SSRL33), which had approximately 300 participants. As I mentioned in my Meeting talk and also at the ensuing SSRL Users' Organization meeting, I encourage your input and suggestions to identify and prioritize future scientific opportunities for SSRL. A number of workshops to focus on scientific facilities will be held over the next several months; most recently a workshop was held in early December to discuss new directions in x-ray scattering.

An official ground breaking ceremony for the LCLS was held in October, with nearly 1,000 attendees including DOE Under Secretary of Science Raymond L. Orbach who noted during his keynote address that the LCLS "will drive understanding and opportunity as no facility has ever done before." The LCLS remains on track for first light in 2008.

I thank those who serve on SSRL's advisory committees - the SSRL Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC), Proposal Review Panel (PRP), the SMB Advisory Committee and the SSRL Users' Organization Executive Committee for their tireless work and advice. Guidance from these groups is extremely important to help us plan and move forward in the wisest and most effective ways. We continue to be grateful to our funding agencies - the Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Sciences for providing the core operations funding and support for materials research and the DOE Office of Biological and Environmental Research and the National Institutes of Health NIGMS and NCRR Programs for support of the structural biology program. Without their effective support, we would not be able to push the scientific forefront and effectively serve our large and growing user community.

I urge you to continue to let us know your opinions and ideas - it helps us serve you better, improve our operations and plan for the future. In closing, on behalf of SSRL and its staff, let me extend our very best wishes to all of you for this holiday season and for 2007!

–Jo Stöhr, SSRL Director