Events (June 2023 - May 2024)
The Support Laboratories Group and the Sample Environment Group have attended several events since the last Newsletter was written. A summary of these events are given here.
Contents:
ISIS Placement Student Alumni Event
(15th June 2023)
On 15th of July, ISIS hosted its first "Isis Placement Student Alumni Event", welcoming back sandwich/industrial placement students that had previously attended as time out from their undergraduate studies. As the Support Laboratories Group is very involved with industrial placement students, many of these returning students were from the group.
Some shorter talks to start the day off, featuring multiple alumni from the support labs group. Top left: Lucy Eccles; top right: Jasmine Hind; bottom left: Matilda Rhodes; bottom right: Douglas Robinson.
The day started with some shorter talks, many of which featured alumni from the Support Labs group (above). There were also some much more in-depth talks later in the day, which again featured many alumni from the Support Labs group, seen below.
Jess Powell's presentation. Jess' placement was in the MCL.
Loren Temple's presentation. Loren's placement was in the MCL.
Robin Lea's presentation. Robin's placement was in the MCL.
Will Jamieson's presentation. Will was the first Support
Labs student, and his placement was in the MCL.
The event was organised by
Dr. Gavin Stenning the manager of the Materials Characterisation Lab. It provided an excellent opportunity to catch up with the students which had passed through the Support Labs Group, and many others, seeing the way in which these placements had influenced the trajectory of the alumni's career paths. Many went on to do PhDs, following a more academic life, while others had gone into industry, finding that the need to manage their own time and emphasis on managing their project (with guidance) had prepared them well for business. The overall message was positive across the board, and there was interest in running the event again in future.
Group photo with the current Support Labs group, along with current students in the group (at the time), Poppy and Michael, and alumni students.
Impact Interview
The impact team conducted a short interview with several placement students, including Robin Lea, who had been the Materials Characterisation Lab's industrial placement student for a year previously, presented here:
Industrial placement alumnus Robin.
In addition, an article was published on the ISIS news page describing this event in more detail
here. Please follow the link for more information!
Support Labs Symposium, ESS
(29th-30th May 2024)
Staff from the ISIS support labs attended the second
Support Labs Symposium
at the European Spallation Source (ESS) in Lund, Sweden. The meeting included a tour around the labs at the ESS, a day of science talks from users and a day of presentations about the assembled labs present. This meeting took on a hybrid form, with some facilities, like ISIS, ILL, HMZ attending in person, and ANSTO, NIST attending online.
As with the meeting held here at ISIS last year, this provided an excellent opportunity for user lab teams to discuss operations with others in equiovalent positions, trade techniques and discuss unique ways in which we provide support. Building these links between facilities has become an important long term goal for the organisers.
The tour of the facility was a personal highlight, getting to see the progress from photos I'd seen before, along with seeing how the ESS had kitted out their characterisation facilities.
The attendees gathered under the signpost pointing to other neutron facilities during the tour of the grounds.
During the tour, we got to meet 'Rupert', the ESS Support Labs duck. This would be something of a theme.
Milford from the ISIS Support Labs team, an "invited squeaker" at the conference.
Neutron and Muon Source User Meeting (NMSUM)
(11th-12th April 2024)
The support labs group attended NMSUM again in 2024, and again presented posters during the poster session. This year, the organisers had set aside a display area for the support labs, sample environment and other operations groups to show off, from VR tours of Endeavour beamlines. The MCL presented a poster highlighting the capabilities of the instrumentaiton in the lab and the ways in which an interested user would go about gaining access, to help raise the lab profile. The D-Lab presented two posters, highlighting the new capabilities of the lab. The Biolab displayed a poster based on BioDeuteration projects, the Cryogenics team had posters highlighting the magnets and Ultra Low Temperature options available to users, the Soft Matter team displayed an array of recent in-house developments and the Pressure and Furnace team had posters describing the gas handling and high pressure vessels available to the user programme; overall, both groups were highlighting available capabilities to users, as can be seen below.
NMSUM Posters
Poster presented by MCL staff at NMSUM 2024. To see full size, please right click and open image in new tab.
Poster presented by Biolab staff at NMSUM 2024. To see full size, please right click and open image in new tab.
Posters presented by D-Lab staff at NMSUM 2024. To see full size, please right click and open image in new tab.
Posters presented by Cryogenics staff at NMSUM 2024. To see full size, please right click and open image in new tab.
Poster presented by Soft Matter staff at NMSUM 2024. To see full size, please right click and open image in new tab.
Posters presented by Pressure and Furnace staff at NMSUM 2024. To see full size, please right click and open image in new tab.
