The Australian Synchrotron’s Kia Wallwork has taken on the position of Principal Beamline Development and Operations Advisor. Kia was previously principal scientist for the powder diffraction beamline, a position she had held since April 2005.

In her new role, Kia will be responsible for liaising with AS staff and the scientific community to support the Australian Synchrotron Development Plan (ASDP) and maintain its relevance to the evolving needs of the region’s synchrotron science communities. The ASDP, also informally known as ‘Science Case 2’, details plans for major facility additions and upgrades to existing Australian Synchrotron capabilities identified as high-priority needs by the science community.

Facility additions and upgrades outlined in the ASDP include the introduction of the ‘top-up’ mode of operation, in which the number of electrons in the storage ring is kept almost constant through regular topping up. Top-up mode will produce more stable light (photon) beams for user experiments, and was identified as essential for maintaining the synchrotron’s world-class accelerator performance. It is expected to be implemented in 2012.

Beamline scoping groups drawn from the research community are working to further develop the scientific and technical cases for a number of beamlines, in particular those identified for the first two phases of construction in the ASDP. These include:

  • Advanced diffraction and scattering beamline (ADS)
  • High coherence nanoprobe (HCN)
  • Medium energy XAS beamline (MEX)
  • Micro materials characterisation beamline (MMC)
  • Micro‐computed tomography beamline (MCT)
  • Small angle scattering beamline for structural biology (SSB)
  • High performance macromolecular crystallography beamline (HMX).

Click here for more information about the ASDP.

To register your interest in an ASDP project, send an email to: asdp@synchrotron.org.au