SRI 2021: Virtual 14th International Conference on Synchrotron Radiation Instrumentation

Abstract

After 40 years, the 14th International Conference on Synchrotron Radiation Instrumentation (SRI 2021) was back in Hamburg, Germany. But this time, it was held virtually. Organized by Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) and the European XFEL, the SRI 2021 had originally been scheduled to take place inperson last summer. However, due to the pandemic, it was postponed until the spring of 2022 (see Figure 1). With the pandemic still not over, the organizers and the International Advisory Committee (IAC) of the SRI conference, chaired by Edgar Weckert (DESY) and Robert Feidenhans’l (EuXFEL), made the difficult decision not to postpone the conference again but to hold it online instead. So, from March 28 to April 1, 2022, more than 1,160 international participants met virtually. Every 3 years since 1982, scientists from all over the world have been meeting to discuss the latest developments in this conference. It is the prime forum for fostering connections between cutting-edge synchrotron radiation instrumentation, science, and the requirements of the user community. It also provides opportunities for discussion and collaborations among scientists and engineers from academia and industry around the world, especially those involved in the development of new concepts, techniques, and instruments related to interdisciplinary research. In nearly 290 talks and 450 posters, the latest results were presented. Participants from 25 countries all around the world attended the event. The main topics of the SRI conference were: new synchrotron radiation (SR) and free-electron laser (FEL) facilities, and the update plans of these facilities; different experimental techniques, such as X-ray scattering and spectroscopy, bioand scanning imaging, structural biology crystallography, coherent techniques, in-situ/operando methods and latest results; beamline innovations; novel X-ray optics; special sample environments; new detectors; data acquisition and data science; and industrial applications. These research areas that are in focus at the SRI conference have overall become much more diverse. Many new opportunities are emerging, in part due to the higher brilliance and coherence of the light sources, such as improved high-resolution X-ray imaging. Therefore, imaging was among the hot topics of the conference and was featured in the keynote talks as well. One of the keynote speakers, Francesco Sette from the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), gave a talk on the improved performance of the new ESRF-EBS, the 4th generation light source in Grenoble, France. As examples for new capabilities, he showed exciting images from the “Human Organ Project,” measured by hierarchical phasecontrast tomography. Imaging of the whole human body shall be collected at multiple anatomical levels on different length scales, ranging from organs to cells. In her keynote talk, Tais Gorkhover (Universität Hamburg, Germany) dealt with stateof-the-art nanoparticle imaging experiments using X-ray FELs as well as new intense and isolated sub-fs X-ray pulses, suitable for studying chemical reactions, ultrafast phase transitions and material sciences. The third keynote talk, directly relevant to imaging, was given by Kazuto Yamauchi (Osaka University, RIKEN/SPring-8, Japan). He reported on progress in using X-ray mirrors to provide nanometer focusing of the highly brilliant X-rays. The X-ray optical systems he presented allow full-field imaging with sub-50 nm resolution and focusing of