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Columns::October 14, 2002
Always and forever: Annual reunion celebrates good times, homecoming
Celebration of life: Memorial service for Eugene Odum scheduled for Oct. 16
President names search committee to identify candidates for provost
Taste of college life
Divergent paths
Vet med professor endures ‘trying’ times to complete his education
Retirees
Kudos
Review, revise, revisions
The world’s a classroom
Campus News
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| B.C. Wang, Ramsey-Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar of X-Ray Crystallography at UGA, brought together representatives from a number of universities in the South, raising more than $15 million to purchase equipment for use at the Advanced Photon Source. (Photo by Paul Efland) |
UGA, consortium dedicate beamline at Argonne National Laboratory
By Phil Williams
phil@franklin.uga.edu
A consortium of Southeastern universities, coordinated by researchers from UGA, will dedicate the first of two planned X-ray beamlines on Oct. 18 at the Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Ill. The consortium signed the memorandum of understanding for the new beamline with the Advanced Photon Source at the laboratory outside Chicago in 1999.
The new beamline will be an important advance in one of the world’s most powerful X-ray facilities, where scientists can study materials science, molecular environmental science and structural biology. The new beamline could help revolutionize structural research in the Southeast.
Built at a cost of more than $800 million, the Advanced Photon Source X-ray began producing super-intense X-ray beams in 1996 and has already drawn some 20 collaborative access teams from around the country, from Harvard, Yale, MIT, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and other institutions. The team that includes UGA was the first from the southeastern United States.
While the APS maintains the vast X-ray ring itself, collaborators must pay for “beamlines”--access points through which the powerful X-rays can be guided and used for scientific research. The Oct. 18 events at the Argonne National Laboratory will include a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a symposium.
“We are absolutely delighted that this new facility will be online soon,” says B.C. Wang, Ramsey-Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar of X-Ray Crystallography at UGA. “What we can learn using this new technology is amazing indeed.”
Wang brought together representatives from a number of universities in the South, raising more than $15 million to purchase equipment for use at the APS. He now serves as director of the board of the collaborative access team from the South.
The Southeast Regional Collaborative Access Team, or SER-CAT, was created after an organizational meeting in May 1997 at UGA. Members of the team now are the universities of Alabama (at Birmingham and Huntsville), Georgia, Kentucky, Illinois at Chicago, Missouri-Kansas City, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, as well as the National Institutes of Health. Total cost of a single beamline is around $7 million, and because more than that has already been raised, the SER-CAT has agreed to support two beamlines, which will cost somewhere between $13 million and $15 million.
The Georgia Research Alliance, a consortium of industry, business and government, is also a major player in the SER-CAT. UGA, Georgia Tech and Emory University each contributed $500,000 toward the construction of the beamlines at APS, and the Georgia Research Alliance matched that amount, with a $1.5 million contribution. The facility is an important component of the structural genomics program, through which Wang and colleagues have brought in another $25 million grant for five years from the NIH. |
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