Dr. Kirk Michaelian was a devoted supporter of the CLS, contributing to the initial development of our facility and participating in many of the meetings and workshops that led to its construction.

Kirk served as a member and chair of both the Mid-Infrared beamteam and our Users' Advisory Committee. He also served on the organizing committee of the 5th Annual Workshop on Infrared Microscopy and Spectroscopy, hosted by the CLS.

As a world expert on photoacoustic spectroscopy, we were privileged to have Kirk perform the photoacoustic commissioning experiments on both the Far- and Mid-Infrared beamlines. Kirk was also a key contributor to the development of applications using coherent synchrotron radiation. Due to his many contributions, Kirk was the first person to be awarded an Honorary CLS Fellowship.

Kirk’s keen intellect, passion for science, and kindness inspired us all.

Honouring Kirk Michaelian at the 2022 CLS AUM is Tom Ellis.

Tom Ellis obtained his B.Sc. in Engineering Physics from Dalhousie University and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Waterloo. After a Postdoc at AT&T Bell Labs he began his academic career with Department of Chemistry at Université de Montréal where his research focused on the application of vibrational spectroscopies to probe surfaces and interfaces. He then spent two years as Dean of Research and Graduate Studies at Acadia University and in 2005 he moved to Saskatchewan to become the Director of Research at the Canadian Light Source during its first 10 years of user operations. He returned to an academic position in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Saskatchewan in 2015, and has been appointed Professor Emeritus starting in 2023.

He first met Kirk Michaelian in 1999 at the initial CLS IR Beamteam meeting in Montreal, and handed over the role of Mid IR Breamteam Leader to him in 2005.

Amira Abdelrasoul, PhD, P. Eng. is an Associate Professor in the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department and the Division of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan. She is the Principal Investigator (PI) of Hemodialysis Membrane Science and Nanotechnology Research Center at University of Saskatchewan. Dr. Abdelrasoul is a membrane technology leader in Canada, and her interdisciplinary research program focuses on solving the existing hemodialysis system problems to decrease the unacceptably high morbidity and mortality rates and increase the quality of life of kidney failure patients. She has so many notable achievements in the academic sphere. Her scholarly and research excellence has been recognized by outstanding academic honors and recent excellence awards from North American institutions, including Governor General Academic Gold Medal and Norman Esch Engineering Innovation Award. In 2022, Dr. Abdelrasoul has been recognized by Chemical Engineering Research & Design Journal as 1 of 18 outstanding women researchers across the globe. For more information about her research, please visit her website http://amiraabdelrasoul.ca/.

Kevin Krause is a 2nd year PhD student at the University of Bordeaux with a background in Mechanical Engineering. During his Masters program at the University of Toronto, he researched carbon dioxide reduction via electrolysis. Specifically, his work was focused on visualizing performance losses in these devices due to mass transport with X-ray spectroscopy and neutron imaging. In his current program, he is coupling infrared visualization techniques with microfluidic water electrolyzers to further investigate mass and charge transport in up and coming clean energy technologies.

Tyler runs the Synchrotron Laboratory for Micro and Nano Devices (SyLMAND), a microfabrication facility at the Canadian Light Source synchrotron facility. Scientists and engineers from academia and industry use SyLMAND's unique fabrication tools to make microfluidics, RF antennas, and x-ray optics. His current research interests are in the design and fabrication of microfluidics for in situ spectroscopy, imaging, and diffraction.

Tyler trained as an analytical chemist at the University of Saskatchewan in Ian Burgess' group, where he specialized in developing tools to study electrochemical reactions on metal electrodes and chemical reactions in microfluidics. He commercialized some of those tools as the co-founder of JackfishSEC Manufacturing which has made over 100 sales to academic and industrial labs worldwide.

Stuart is an Associate Scientist on the Mid-IR beamline at the Canadian Light Source, providing outstanding support to an active research community. His current research interests include instrumental development for challenging sampling configurations, and the development of Quasar, a user-friendly spectroscopic analysis and machine learning data analysis tool.

Originally from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Stuart trained as a surface and analytical chemist at the University of Guelph with Paul Rowntree where he developed a novel multi-technique instrument which combined infrared, ultrafast time-resolved photoemission and metastable atom deexcitation spectroscopy for the study of surface chemistry of organometallic precursors.