Canadian Powder Diffraction Workshop 18 (CPDW18)

Bob has influenced generations of XRD enthusiasts around the world with his program GSAS II, a free, friendly, and well documented software to perform a myriad of XRD data reduction and analysis including Rietveld refinement. Throughout his prolific career, Bob worked at J.S. Anderson’s lab at Oxford, Arizona State University, the Los Alamos LANSCE and Argonne IPNS spallation neutron sources, and recently retired as a Senior Physicist at Argonne National Laboratory. He was President of the American Crystallographic Association and Recipient of the ACA Trueblood Award as well as the ICDD Barrett and Hanawalt Awards; he is a Fellow of both the Mineralogical Society of America and the ACA.

Joel Reid is a Senior Industrial Scientist at the CLS, specializing in powder diffraction for the Industry Services group. Prior to joining the CLS in 2011, Joel held a position as Senior Scientific Editor at the International Centre for Diffraction Data (Newtown Square, PA), and as a research scientist working on biomaterials for bone replacement at Millenium Biologix (Kingston, ON). An engineering physicist by training, he completed his undergraduate and PhD in engineering physics at Queen’s University in Kingston. His work with clients and collaborators often involves identification and quantification of complex, multiphase mixtures and the solving of new structures with powder diffraction.

Professor Levente Balogh completed his PhD at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary, and postdocs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Queen’s University. He was employed as a Research Scientist at the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories before joining Queen’s faculty in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering. He has expertise in the characterization of advanced materials, additively manufactured metals, and irradiation effects on the performance of structural materials, among other areas.

Dr. Hatem M. Titi, PhD, is a crystallographer with expertise in single-crystal and powder X-ray diffraction, as well as small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). He manages the XRD Facility at McGill University in the Department of Chemistry, supporting advanced structural characterization of polymers, biomaterials, nanoparticles, porous frameworks, and more. His work applies X-ray techniques to understand molecular and nanoscale architectures, phase behaviour, and material properties.

Elaa Ben Fredj is a product specialist at Anton Paar, specializing in X-ray diffraction (XRD), small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), non-ambient attachments, surface area, and pore size techniques. Elaa holds a Master's degree in Chemistry from Montreal University, where she focused her research on Li-ion batteries, utilizing XRD techniques to support her work. With a strong academic background and practical expertise, Elaa is passionate about providing innovative solutions and technical support to clients in the field of material characterization.

Paula received her B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Delaware, and her Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry from the University of Arizona.  She has spent time working in the fields of organometallic chemistry, solid-state chemistry, neutron single-crystal diffraction, development and validation of pharmaceutical X-Ray powder diffraction analytical methods, and has a special interest in non-ambient diffraction techniques (variable temperature and/or humidity)

Graham received his B.S. in Chemistry from SUNY Buffalo and his Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry from The Ohio State University working with Patrick Woodward.  He then did a post-doc at the Lujan Neutron Scattering Center at Los Alamos National Lab followed by several years as a staff scientist.  He came to the Canadian Light Source as a Brockhouse Scientist in 2018.  His research is focused on advancing structural analysis using advanced powder diffraction methods.  This includes Rietveld refinements, ab-initio structural solution of extended and molecular solids, and local structure analysis using the pair distribution function.  He is an advocate for probing the structure of a material over several length scales in order to obtain a complete structural understanding.

Feizhou got his B.Eng. degree in Materials Science from Tsinghua University in China, and finished his PhD in Physics at University of Connecticut, USA. He was a frequent user of the NSLS, before joined Canadian Light Source as a staff scientist in 2005. He designed and commissioned the Resonant Elastic and Inelastic X-ray Scattering (REIXS) beamline at the CLS. His research interests include quantum materials, epitaxial thin films, strain engineering in heterostructures.

Dr. Anton Dmitrienko currently holds a position of a chemical crystallographer under MITACS Elevate program at Proto Manufacturing.  Anton spent more than 10 years working with a wide variety of chemical materials including inorganic solids, organometallic complexes, and crystalline pharmaceutical formulations. Having vast experience in powder and single crystal x-ray diffraction, Dr. Dmitrienko is involved in the development of modern diffraction hardware and software at Proto. Anton’s areas of expertise include structure solution, phase characterization, VT-VP studies and high-throughput diffraction.

Anita is the X-ray specialist in the Structural Chemistry Facility in the Chemistry Dept. at UBC.  She specializes in the X-ray diffraction of powder, polycrystalline, and new materials and also supports the single crystal side of the facility.  She has an MSc degree from UBC; for her thesis, she used single crystal X-ray diffraction in a crystallographic study of tellurium oxysalt minerals.  Prior to her current role, she spent many years working in hydrometallurgical research, working on novel methods of water-based extraction of gold and/or copper from ores.  Anita organized and co-hosted the CPDW16 2023 at UBC and has attended and instructed at previous CPDWs. 

Associate Scientist at the Canadian Light Source

Al received a B.Sc. majoring in Physics at the University of Guelph. He then remained there earning his M.Sc. and Ph.D. His work was primarily based on the interpretation of short-range ordering in amorphous solids from Pair Distribution Function (PDF) data. Al also did experimental commissioning of a rotating Cu-anode lab x-ray diffractometer performing a variety of x-ray diffraction experiments. During his Ph.D. Al also spent time commissioning the Brockhouse High-Energy Wiggler (BXDS-WHE) beamline and as a user. Al joined the Brockhouse team in February 2020 and has helped bring Brockhouse beamlines into the general user phase, designing experiments and developing software to improve functionality at the BXDS-HEW and the Brockhouse Undulator (BXDS-UND) beamlines. He is also currently developing and commissioning high-resolution PDF experiments at Brockhouse.

Scott A Speakman, PhD, is a principal scientist at Malvern Panalytical focused on applying X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis to material science challenges. Dr. Speakman began his research career using in-situ XRD to study energy storage materials before migrating to interdisciplinary support of XRD analyses while working at the High Temperature Materials Lab at Oak Ridge National Lab and then managing the X-ray Shared Experimental Facility at MIT. While working at MIT, Dr. Speakman received an Infinite Mile award for exceptional service to MIT and was made a Fellow of the International Center for Diffraction Data (ICDD). Dr. Speakman joined Malvern Panalytical in 2014 with a mission to “remember every experimental request at MIT where I had to say “No, we cannot do that in a lab” and make it possible.”

Toby Bond is a Senior Scientist in the Industrial Science group at the Canadian Light Source (CLS), Canada’s national synchrotron facility. He is a specialist in X-ray imaging and diffraction, specializing in in-situ and operando analysis of batteries and energy materials for industry clients of the CLS. Toby is an electrochemist by training, who completed his MSc and PhD in Jeff Dahn’s lab at Dalhousie University with a focus in developing methods and instrumentation to characterize long-term degradation in Li-ion batteries.

Senior Scientist, Beamline Responsible (VESPERS)

Karim Louca received his BSc in Mechanical Engineering from the American University of Sharjah and his Ph.D in Mechanical and Materials Engineering at the University of Western Ontario working with Hamidreza Abdolvand.

His research focused on microscale deformation in hexagonal-close packed metals using synchrotron three-dimensional X-ray diffraction (3D-XRD). He is a former user of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) and Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS).