BY MARGUERITE HUBER
The workshop brought together stakeholders to reflect on past achievements and celebrate more than 20 years of HPCAT
HPCAT, the High-Pressure Collaborative Access Team, at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source (APS), recently celebrated its 20-year anniversary, commemorated during a workshop. The workshop, "Opportunities for Advancement of Studies of Matter at Extreme Conditions with APS/HPCAT-Upgrade," was held from November 7-9, 2023. The APS is a DOE Office of Science user facility at Argonne National Laboratory.
The celebration featured plenary talks by Paul Kearns, Argonne Director, Kimberly S. Budil, DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Director, Douglas A. Dalton, DOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Federal Program Manager and Laurent Chapon, Associate Laboratory Director for Photon Sciences and APS Director.
The workshop reflected on HPCAT's history and achievements. Speakers also dove into future opportunities enabled by the upgraded APS and its brighter, more coherent X-ray beam. The workshop brought together HPCAT partners and the broader high-pressure research community, as well as future users from the graduating student and early career community. More than 125 attendees, with more than a quarter being students or postdoctoral researchers, participated in discussions that ranged from past accomplishments to future aspirations.
The agenda included sessions focusing on collaboration between beamline scientists from HPCAT, other APS beamlines, and scientists from various high-pressure facilities. Breakout discussions emphasized the importance of collaboration, planning, and perseverance in the realm of synchrotron science.
“The HPCAT workshop and anniversary celebration was a great opportunity to reflect on past accomplishments, but more importantly it was also a time to look ahead and discuss major scientific challenges that could be addressed post APS and HPCAT upgrade,” said Nenad Velisavljevic, HPCAT Director and LLNL staff scientist.
“We are grateful to LLNL Director Budil and Argonne Director Kearns for taking time to attend the event and it is great to see continued support from DOE for high-pressure research at synchrotron sources,” said Velisavljevic. “HPCAT is also undergoing a major upgrade to infrastructure and experimental capabilities, and we look forward to coming back online and working with our user community. It is really an exciting time for high pressure research and hopefully we’ll have many new accomplishments to share at the next anniversary celebration."