Following recent meetings between West Australian researchers and Australian Synchrotron beamline scientists, the Synchrotron is looking forward to an increase in research proposals from the west.

In August 2014, more than 80 West Australian researchers and took part in the third West Australian Synchrotron Symposium (WASS-3), hosted by Murdoch University.

Held every couple of years, WASS aims to increase awareness of synchrotron techniques amongst WA researchers. The program featured beamline capability presentations by five Australian Synchrotron scientists and research case studies by experienced WA users. Beamlines represented at the meeting were powder diffraction (PD), soft x-ray spectroscopy (SXR), small and wide angle x-ray scattering (SAXS/WAXS), imaging and medical (IMBL) and infrared microscopy (IRM).

In association with the WASS event, several informal satellite meetings were held at Curtin University and the University of Western Australia. These smaller meetings of around 20 people each enabled groups of interested future users to meet individually with the AS scientists and discuss detailed aspects of beamtime proposals and experimental design.

Beamline scientist Anton Tadich (SXR) said the WA groups had a lot of interesting ideas, and he was looking forward to seeing some great applications for beamtime.