What does the UEC do?

The UEC works closely with ALS management to represent and serve the needs of thousands of users at the ALS. Here are a few highlights of the UECs recent activities:

• Maintain strong interactions among the user community and ALS staff and engage the next generation of student and young scientist users through our annual User Meeting.

• Function as the intermediary between users and ALS management on issues important to users, including revisions to the ALS proposal process and site access.

• Organized the Lightsources 101 workshop for early career users during the user meeting.

• Communicated opportunities and impacts associated with the ALS Upgrade project (ALS-U), and engaged the user community throughout the planning process, including co-organizing a series of townhalls.

• Runs ALS User Meeting Awards, including recently establishing a new Early Career Award.

• Organized joint advocacy efforts to support federal funding of DOE light sources.

• Discussed mechanisms to enhance user productivity, such as joint proposals and access to Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry.

The UEC typically meets 4-6 times yearly, with two meetings (1 at the User Meeting) in person and two 1-hour meetings with the ALS Science Advisory Committee (SAC) each year. Potential duties include service in (one of) the following: User Meeting Organizing Committee, Awards Committee, Student Poster/Travel Awards Committee, UEC Secretary, or Webmaster (typically the student member).

Questions? Contact the UEC at alsuec@lbl.gov.

The Advanced Light Source Users’ Executive Committee (UEC) invites you to participate in the election of three new UEC members to represent the ALS community.

View candidate statements and submit your votes by 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on Wednesday, Nov. 22.

https://www.alsuec.org/2023-uec-elections

The Advanced Light Source Users’ Executive Committee (UEC) invites nominations for its upcoming election for three new UEC members (2024–2026 term). Nominations will be accepted through Friday, October 27, 2023. Membership in the ALS UEC shall be open to those users who are interested in research at the ALS. We note that we currently do not have an open position for ALS employees this year. Please check back for next year. We are especially seeking nominations to represent the biosciences community, but we welcome nominations from the entire user community. Self-nominations are allowed.

The UEC is seeking nominations for 3 new members to serve a three-year term (2024–2026)

For more information, please visit ALS NEWS.

****Nominations are Closed****

Can you give a preview of some of the UEC activities coming up?

After ALS-U, many of the present experiments at ALS will be different. There will be a number of user forums for different beamlines and techniques that will be strongly affected by the upgrade. So, that’s something that the user community should look out for.

We’ll be returning to an in-person User Meeting for the first time in years. It’ll be great to recover these face-to-face interactions between researchers. The UEC has been championing enhancing education and accessibility related to synchrotron research. I’ve been a co-organizer of the Light Sources 101 tutorial for the past few years, and we have added a component to guide new users in the competitive beamtime proposal process, hoping new users can be brought into the fold more effectively. There are also efforts underway involving the UEC and other stakeholders to make the beamtime proposal review process more equitable.

More: Inna Vishik, 2023 Users’ Executive Committee Chair (ALS News)

September 11–15, 2023

This hybrid event will take place at Berkeley Lab and via Zoom

The 2023 ALS User Meeting & Visioning Workshops will be held as a hybrid event September 11–15, 2023. Join us in Berkeley or virtually as we celebrate the 30th anniversary of first light and look ahead to the future. The User Meeting will take place Monday and Tuesday, comprising a tutorial day, plenary talks, poster session, and awards dinner. The second half of the week will offer users, staff, and invited guests the opportunity to shape the facility’s future science directions and capabilities beyond ALS-U through visioning workshops.

Registration will open in late spring.

We are happy to announce that the seven new members of the Advanced Light Source Users’ Executive Committee for the term have been elected:

• Aidan Coffey (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

• Whitney Loo (University of Wisconsin, Madison)

• Devin Grabner (Washington State University, Student Member)

• Leonid Sheps (Sandia National Laboratory)

• Tamas Varga (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

• Alexander Baker (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)

• Sophie Morley ( Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory )

We would like to thank for their devoted service the outgoing committee members:

• Rourav Basak (University of Califonia, San Diego)

• Hope Michelsen (University of Colorado, Boulder)

• Stephanie Gilbert Corder (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

• Yingge Du (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

• Matthijs van Spronsen ( Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory )

Read the ALS UEC charter here.

More information: New UEC Members for 2023 (ALS News)

Thank you all for joining us at the virtual User Meeting, last month! We are excited to see how future meetings can bring science to more people through virtual and hybrid modes, while at the same time also look forward to potential in-person gatherings in the near future where we can shake hands again or sit down at tables and discuss science over drinks. On behalf of the UEC, I want to also give a big thanks to the entire team of ALS staff from the User Office and the Communications team for working so hard behind the scenes to make sure all aspects were run smoothly: Heidi Clark, Andrea Taylor, Angela Setiadi, Andi Jones, Amanda Espiritu, Shawna Vila-Flores, Paris Gordon, Cindy Lee, Lori Tamura, Ina Reichel, and Ashley White. A special shoutout also to Dula Parkinson for the characteristic poster slam and limerick slam, and to Andrea Taylor for the memorable performance.

We also want to thank you for your support of the letter to Congress seeking financial support for the ALS, which was sent and received by the Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development.

August 2022 Message from the UEC

The Advanced Light Source (ALS) User Meeting was held August 15–17, 2022. The event, co-chaired by Users’ Executive Committee (UEC) members Hope Michelsen, Yu He, and Rourav Basak, was convened on the virtual Zoom platform for the third consecutive year. A survey conducted during the meeting showed most attendees would prefer a hybrid mode for future meetings. Plenary session recordings are available online.
more: 2022 User Meeting Highlights

Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi promoting the COMPETES act in front of the Advanced Light Source  in February 2022