Words from the Director Trevor Forsyth - read about the latest developments and news at LINXS!

A man, Director Trevor Forsyth. Photo: Kennet Ruona. — LINXS Director Trevor Forsyth. Photo: Kennet Ruona.

We are heading into May with an extremely busy set of activities! Following our attendance at the recent kick-off meeting of the HALRIC project in Copenhagen, we are now rapidly approaching the next LINXS Science Day on the 4th May – the number of registrations is even higher than last year but there are still a few places left before the real life participation will have to close. The programme contains presentations from senior managers at MAX IV, ESS, and ISIS (UK) on developments at the large facilities, as well as on plans for LINXS itself as it charts its way towards a new future on the Science Village.

There will also be a session driven by contributions from young researchers, as well as updates on three new Themes that will start in the autumn. These were selected by the LINXS management, drawing heavily on the advice of the Science Advisory Board (SAB) – who put a great deal of effort into the evaluation of the two stage application process.

The successful Themes are a (i) Heritage Science, submitted by Mikael Fauvelle (Lund Department of Archaeology and Ancient History), and jointly led between Sweden and Norway, (ii) Chemistry of Life, submitted by Andrew Hudson (Leicester University, Institute for Structural and Chemical Biology, UK), (iii) Environment and Climate submitted by Dimitrios Floudas (Lund Biology Department). Representatives from each of these new Themes will make short summary presentations at the Science Day.

Yesterday, we had a great guest seminar with Tamim Darwish from ANSTO in Australia, who spoke about the DeuNet consortium of deuteration facilties – highly relevant of course to neutron science in the life sciences, soft matter, and chemistry.

Other events coming up soon include a catalysis workshop as part of the New Materials theme, and a Small-Angle Scattering Clinic being run as a pilot during the spring. There will also be webinars by Mikael Lund on Antibodies in Solution as part of the LINXS-NIST webinar series and one on Bubbles in Colloid Science by Vincent Craig and Barry Ninham (ANU, Australia).

On the 9th May there will be a workshop on 3D histology with X-ray micro-tomography as part of the Integrative Pharmacology and Drug Discovery (IPDD) theme, and on the 24th May IPDD will have its annual theme meeting. There are also some guest seminars and workshops coming up including one from Yuri Gerelli (Sapienza, Italy) on Planar biomembranes and neutron reflectometry, another from Pau Bernado (Montpellier, France) on A Structural Perspective of the Pathological Threshold in Huntington’s Disease, and one from Michael Adams (Luxembourg) on Atomistic simulations of the magnetic neutron scattering from nanoparticles. In early June, Northern Lights on Food will hold its 4th major conference.

We also wish to welcome two guest researchers to LINXS: Andrew Boothroyd (Oxford, UK), and Andreas Stadler (Juelich) - both will be guests at LINXS over the spring/summer period, and will I’m sure be delighted to interact with you all throughout their stays.

A final note on LINXS communications efforts - orchestrated by our communications officer Noomi Egan. Since we are growing from three to six themes, as well as a corresponding increase in LINXS activities, we will begin to send out event-focused emails weekly to remind you of what is happening during the week. We hope that this effort will make it a bit easier to follow what is happening here at LINXS!

Take care and stay safe!