Fundamentals of Neutron Spin Echo (NSE) Spectroscopy for Biology and Soft Matter Workshop
Purpose
An educational workshop on the fundamentals of NSE spectroscopy applied to soft matter and biology will prepare the scientists to use NSE techniques. The basics of static and quasi-elastic neutron scattering, NSE instrumentation, and NSE experimental design and data analysis will be covered. In addition, students will select from three interest group sessions on polymers, proteins, or lipid membranes. The workshop will ready participants to use the new, upgraded NSE in the National Institute of Standards and Technology Center for Neutron Research (NCNR) to benefit their research.
When
In person workshop will be held September 19-21, 2023
Registration opens April 15 thru June 1, 2023
Decision of application acceptances on June 20, 2023
Location
NIST Center for Neutron Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, Maryland.
Who Should Attend
The workshop is designed for graduate students, postdocs, and early career faculties in the soft matter field, with little or no previous experience with neutron spin-echo spectroscopy. The workshop is on a “start-to-end” concept which means not only lectures and hands-on exercises but also proposal writing and instrument selection, etc., will be covered to engage the participants in the whole experience of an NSE project. Moreover, participants will have a chance to have a tour in the guide hall to observe the NSE instrumentation. Attendance is currently limited to 20 people, and travel funds will be provided.
Funding
The workshop is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), which includes all local expenses. There will be additional funding available for travel to and from the workshop.
Background
NSE spectroscopy is a quasi-elastic neutron scattering technique with the highest energy resolution among other neutron spectroscopic methods. NSE can access the dynamics over a time scale from 1ps to 100 ns at length scales of 1 nm to 50 nm, which is suitable for soft matter research (e.g., lipid membrane dynamics, protein dynamics, polymer chain dynamics, etc.). The University of Delaware (UD), together with the NCNR and the University of Maryland (UMD), are upgrading the NSE spectrometer at the NCNR by adopting optimized superconducting precession coils (OSCPC) recently developed at the Juelich Center for Neutron Science for the J-NSE-Phoenix at the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum, Germany.
*If you have any questions regarding the information being collected for the workshop sign-up, please visit the UD Legal Notices site for more information.
