NSLS-II Workshop on Current and Future Trends in Macromolecular Crystallography Experiments: Focus on Automation, High Data Rate Analysis and User Interfaces

The NSLS-II (MX beamlines) is organizing a workshop entitled “Current and Future Trends in Macromolecular Crystallography Experiments: Focus on Automation, High Data Rate Analysis and User Interfaces”.

The format of the workshop is online (using Zoom) and will take place on March 16, March 17 and March 18 from 12:00 PM (EST) to 6:00 PM (EST) for all three days. There is no fee to participate in the workshop, but you do have to register to be sure to have a place in the zoom sessions. For each day, there will be up to 10 (20 + 5 minutes) presentations, up to 6 flash presentations and 2 discussion sessions. Participation from synchrotron facilities worldwide is encouraged.

For those that are interested in contributing with a poster, we will host a poster session on the workshop website.   

The WebSite for the Workshop is: https://www.bnl.gov/mce2021/ and contains all relevant information for registering.

Description of the workshop: 

            Synchrotron Radiation Macromolecular Crystallography has been on the forefront of biological studies requiring access to structural information. It has seen several major updates and upgrades ranging from sample standards, robotic sample changers, micro-focus beamlines, pixel array detectors to distributed and automated data processing, and the list goes on. In the last few years, several major facilities began operation and a few more were upgraded to what is the state of the art today. Along these upgrades, all facilities have updated and upgraded equipment, high performance computing and the associated software to allow researchers to continue pursuing the most impactful areas of life science research. In the coming years, more facilities will be upgraded, including two in the US.

All of these advances are required for groups from academia and industry to increase their rate of discovery, relying on either the brightest beams to tackle the most challenging projects, or higher level of automation, so that researchers can not only achieve more, but most importantly can invest valuable time tackling the difficult projects and rely on automation for their other projects.

In this workshop, we will have presentations dealing with sample automation and standards, presentations about high data rate MX analysis as well as on user interfaces and remote access. In all sessions, we will emphasize the current state of the art and planned upgrades. Ideally, we would like the spirit of the workshop to be cooperative, even sparking collaborations to elaborate common solutions to deal with common problems. 

We encourage individuals working at Synchrotron facilities worldwide to register through the workshop website as presenters and welcome all to participate in the discussions. For any questions, please feel free to get in touch with the organizers (NSLS-II_MX_2021@bnl.gov)

List of confirmed speakers per session

Session 1:

Matthew Bowler, MASSIF1, ESRF, France 

Malcolm Capel, NE-CAT, APS, ANL, US 

Aina Cohen, SSRL, SLAC, US 

Kazuya Hasegawa, SPring-8, Japan 

Edwin Lazo, NSLS-II, BNL, US 

Oleg Makarov, GM/CA, APS, ANL, US 

Gergerly Papp, EMBL Grenoble, France 

Sofiane Saouane, PETRA P11, Desy, Germany 

Mark Williams, DLS, UK 

TBA, MAX IV, Sweden 

Session 2: 

Gerard Bricogne, Global Phasing Ltd., UK

Gabriella Carini, BNL, US

Dale Kreitler, NSLS-II, BNL, US

Filip Leonarski, SLS, PSI, Switzerland

Artem Lyubimov, SSRL, SLAC, US

Frank V Murphy, NE-CAT, APS, ANL, US

Marina Nikolova, PETRA3, EMBL Hamburg, Germany

Gianluca Santoni, ESRF, Grenoble, France

Graeme Winter, DLS, UK

Qingping Xu, GM/CA, APS, ANL, US

TBA, MAX IV, Sweden

TBA, SPring-8, Japan

TBA, X-Spectrum. Hamburg, Germany

TBA, Dectris, Baden, Switzerland

Session 3: 

Jun Aishima, NSLS-II, BNL, US

Ana Gonzales, MAX IV, Sweden

Mark Hilgart, GM/CA, APS, ANL, US

Kunio Hirata, SPring-8, Japan

Ivars Karpics, PETRA3, EMBL Hamburg c/o DESY, Germany

Guillaume Pompidor, PETRA3, P11, DESY, Germany

Kate Mary Louise Smith, SLS, PSI, Switzerland

Daniele de Sanctis, ESRF, France

Jennifer Wierman, SLAC, US

TBA, DLS, UK

Tuesday March 16 Session: Sample Automation: Standards and Developments

Topics: robotics, gripper, Dewar, high capacity, sample format, machine vision, bar code, low level applications …

Wednesday March 17 Session: High Data Rate MX Automated Analysis

Topics: infrastructures, pipelines, throughput, file format, distributed computing, data availability shareability …

Thursday March 18 Session: User Interfaces and Remote Access

Topics: data acquisition GUI, database, frontends, remote access, user-less operation, post processing, scheduling …

Each session will start with introductory remarks and a discussion session at the end  

The organizing committee

Jean Jakoncic

Dale F. Kreitler

Martin R. Fuchs 

Herbert J. Bernstein