XRD & Scattering School 2024 - Canadian Light Source

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.

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.

Adam received a B.Sc degree in Chemistry from the University of Saskatchewan in 2008. In the summers, he worked in the labs of Prof. Matthew Paige and Prof. Robert Scott, synthesizing and characterizing nanoparticles and ligands for catalysis. Adam then moved to Hamilton, Ontario to pursue a Ph.D in Chemistry at McMaster University, applying the scanning transmission X-ray microscope (STXM) for a new purpose: patterning and lithography at the sub-50 nm scale. Upon defending his thesis in 2012, he accepted a post-doctorate position in the X-ray Optics for Extreme Conditions group lead by Dr. Sasa Bajt, at DESY, Hamburg, Germany. There he fabricated multilayer structures, including multilayer Laue lenses for hard X-ray microscopes, and reflective coatings for EUV and soft X-rays. In 2013 Adam returned to CLS and has been there ever since. First, he led the design, construction and commissioning of a new cryo-STXM for the SM beamline. Then in 2016 he was convinced by Dr. Ariel Gomez to take the jump into reciprocal space and join the Brockhouse Sector, an empty patch of concrete floor that would soon become three hard X-ray beamlines. Adam continues to develop and deliver the many endstations at BXDS, including the powder diffraction and SAXS/WAXS user programs, and is interested in the fate of nanoparticles in wildlife and the environment.

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.

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.

Beatriz got her B.S and Masters degrees in Havana, Cuba. She finished her Ph.D and post-doc in the National Institute for Space Research in Sao Paulo, Brazil. During this time, she was a frequent user of the Brazilian Light Source diffraction beamlines, where she then worked as a staff scientist. In 2012 she started working at the Canadian Light Source, in the Brockhouse project. Her research interests include applying a variety of synchrotron techniques to solve structural problems in thin films, multilayers, quantum dots, magnetic heterostructures, catalysts, among other materials.

Narayan earned his Ph.D. in Physics from Banaras Hindu University, India, followed by postdoctoral research positions at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics and the Cyclotron Institute, Texas A&M University. Before joining the Brockhouse group at the Canadian Light Source (CLS), he served as a Staff Scientist at both the Synchrotron Radiation Center (SRC) in Madison and the Advanced Photon Source (APS). With an extensive background in instrumentation, Narayan has played a pivotal role in the design and fabrication of cutting-edge end stations including COLTRIMS, ARPES, and TOF electron spectrometers. His current research endeavors are focused on employing a diverse array of synchrotron techniques to characterize materials such as biominerals and semiconductor nanomaterials, thus unraveling their complex properties and potential applications.

Charan has received his B.Tech in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering from National Institute of Technology Warangal, India. He then obtained M.Sc., Materials Science from Universita degli Studi di Torino, Italy and M.Sc., Geomaterials and Geochemistry from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen, ̈Munich Germany under the Erasmus mundus framework Master in Material Science Exploring Large scale Facilities. He pursued PhD from University College London, UK on the topic “Ptychotomographic imaging at I13-1, Diamond Light Source”. Charan worked as a post-doctoral research associate at University of Cambridge wherein he worked on imaging magnetic nano-inclusions in geological samples employing Ptycho-Tomography. After his stint at Cambridge, Charan joined Canadian Light Source as an associate scientist at Spectromicroscopy (SM) beamline. His research interests include Ptychography, phase retrieval algorithms, tomography, synthesis of metallic nanomaterials and materials science.

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