Project Areas at the Alberta Synchrotron Institute

All scientific and outreach activities of the ASI are administered as projects in various areas and disciplines. The ASI website is primarily used to support the outreach activities of ASI, but the scientific projects of ASI also have pages posted that are of interest within their own disciplines. Each of the scientific projects is managed by a project leader who, in turn, reports to the Scientific Director of the ASI. Brief summaries are shown below, more detailed information is available for some project areas.

There are currently four ASI protein crystallography (PX) projects. The first project will contribute to the development of world-class protein crystallography beamlines at the CLS allowing Alberta's scientists to take maximum advantage of the resources that the CLS will provide. This will also ensure that the protein crystallographers in Alberta have a voice in the direction of the development of structural biology at the CLS, and will protect the considerable investment that the Alberta government agencies have made towards the development of protein crystallography beamlines. The second project provides and administers the funds for the protein crystallographers of the province to travel to synchrotrons for data collection. The goal of the third project is to train highly skilled individuals (scientists, engineers, and software developers) in the development of beamline technologies. Finally, the goal of the fourth PX project was to find external funding to develop interim access, beamline technology and a site for scientific training.

Go to the Protein Crystallography Page

The Industrial Science project provides support to academic, government and industrial researchers who are interested using synchrotron-based techniques to solve industrial research problems. The available techniques span the entire spectrum of synchrotron technologies. Current research areas include Energy and Materials Science (anti-corrosion films, polysulfides, carbides in nickel matrices, welding defects, oil sands, and polymers), Environmental Science (selenium in sulfides and coal, and heavy metals in mine tailings), and Life Sciences (microscopy of scar tissue, and chromium and selenium levels in commercial neutraceuticals). Collaborators include Syncrude Canada, NOVA Chemicals, DNX Inc., CANMET (Devon), Alberta Environment, Luscar, Dynatec, and the Canadian Light Source Inc. The Industrial Science project also sponsors outreach programs: workshops, lectures, trade show displays, and brochures. These serve to introduce the Alberta research community to synchrotron technology and the Canadian Light Source synchrotron, and to provide expert assistance and training in synchrotron-based research techniques.

Infrared spectroscopy (IR) is currently a component of the Industrial Science project. Yoram Apelblat has prepared an in depth document describing synchrotron infrared spectroscopy and spectromicroscopy.

Go to the IR Spectroscopy Page

This project is intended to use the advanced networking provided by CANARIE Inc. and BigBangwidth Inc. to enhance the collection of experimental diffraction data for research, such as Protein Crystallography (PX), from synchrotron radiation facilities. The result will be an improved networking connectivity that enhances the performance of the developing structural biology facilities of the CLS and allows the structural biology community of Alberta to make the most effective use of the new facility. For researchers, the benefits of this proposal include more efficient use of beam time, faster experiments, unlimited image and data set size, reduced transportation of recording media, and reduced necessity for travel by researchers.

The End-to-End Lightpath project will deliver uninterrupted lightpaths between the CLS Protein Crystallography beamline in Saskatchewan directly to researcher's desktops, servers or storage facilities in Alberta, providing a 10 to 100 fold improvement over current network performance. Researchers will have access to end-to-end lightpaths in order to transfer large data sets between provinces using SRNET, Netera and Canarie.

The project will utilize a combination of existing and developing technologies, including the BigBangwidth Lightpath Accelerator (LPA) system, optical network interface cards on all receiving network devices, optical fiber installations to LPA enabled hosts and integration on the LPA System with the respective regional network infrastructure (Netera and SRNET).

More about End-to-End Lightpaths to Synchrotrons

Small Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) gives important information on the shape of molecules in solution. The SAXS project of the ASI will use synchrotron-based SAXS to study proteins such as calmodulin, and will work to improve SAXS data analysis techniques. This project will also support research into the biological applications of EXAFS, a synchrotron X-ray spectroscopy technique that can be used to study metal atoms inside metalloproteins.

The X-ray projects of the ASI include both X-ray microscopy and X-ray absorption spectroscopy. X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) allows for the elemental characterization of materials. X-ray Absorption Near Edge Spectroscopy (XANES) and Extended X-ray Absorption Fine Structure (EXAFS) are two ancillary techniques of XAS, which provide chemical speciation and structural information to complement the elemental identification. The ASI is responsible for providing input towards the design and construction of a hard X-ray Microprobe (XMP) beamline at the CLS, which will carry out XAS, XANES and EXAFS experiments on areas of microscopic size. This feature allows for the microscopic chemical "mapping" of heterogeneous samples. This beamline will be a powerful tool for research in material sciences and for studies in earth and environmental sciences, including pollution control. EXAFS and XANES can be applied to studies of the structures of surfaces or interfaces (such as catalytic materials), or to determination of the structures of materials at high pressures where the apertures to the sample cells are small. These synchrotron-based methods can be used under environmentally relevant conditions (presence of water, normal pressures and temperatures, and dilute ion concentrations). The structural characteristics of thin films, surfaces and interfaces at atomic resolution are also of fundamental importance for applications in microelectronics and nanotechnology. An overview of synchrotron X-ray absorption fine structure and X-ray microprobe analysis (XAFS and XMP) and a list of online technical resources for XAFS have been prepared by Dr. Marcus Karolewski.

Go to the XAFS and XMP page

Go to the XAFS resource page

Go to the XAFS Staff page