Combined User Meeting Brings ALS, Foundry Guests to Berkeley Lab

Advanced Light Source
Molecular Foundry

The population of Berkeley Lab will swell by about 600 tomorrow through Saturday when users of two of the Lab’s national scientific research facilities, the Advanced Light Source and the Molecular Foundry, join together for workshops and meetings for the first time.

The ALS Users’ Meeting kicks off tomorrow in the Building 50 Auditorium with a full program of keynote speakers, poster sessions, workshops, and vendor exhibits. This year 33 vendors will be on hand to display a wide range of scientific equipment under a tent in the ALS parking lot and on the patio. To view this year's roster of vendors and a description of their products, go here. All lab employees are invited to visit the exhibits from 10 a.m. to noon and 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. tomorrow, and on Friday from 9 a.m. to noon.

The Molecular Foundry Users’ meeting program and other information can be found here. The Foundry, in Building 67, will accommodate 30 vendors this year. A complete list with links to vendor product information is available here. Lab employees are welcome to visit the exhibits on Thursday, from 10 a.m. to noon, and again from 2 until 4 p.m., as well as Friday morning.

To accommodate the joint sessions and the number of visitors, live video casts of the respective sessions will be shown in the Building 50 and Building 66 Auditoriums.

Special guest speakers will include Nobel Laureate Roger Kornberg of Stanford University, DOE Basic Energy Sciences Associate Director Pat Dehmer, and Michael Lubell, Director of Public Affairs for the American Physical Society. The ALS program will include a tribute to Gary Krebs, former leader of the User Services group, who died May 22. The two groups will combine for a poster session from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m tomorrow in the Molecular Foundry, followed by a barbecue dinner on the ALS patio.

Guest House

Two groundbreaking ceremonies will be held in conjunction with this week’s Joint User Meeting for the Advanced Light Source and the Molecular Foundry, and Berkeley Lab employees are invited to attend. The first, tomorrow at 12:15 p.m., will signal the start of construction for the ALS User Support Building, which will arise on the former site of Building 10. A brief program on the outdoor deck west of Building 80 will be moderated by ALS Director Roger Falcone and will include remarks by Lab Deputy Director Graham Fleming, DOE Basic Energy Sciences Associate Director Pat Dehmer, and Chair of the ALS User Executive Committee Tony Van Buuren. The USB is expected to open in the summer of 2009.

User Support Building

On Friday, the Berkeley Lab Guest House, a convenient and affordable 70-bed short-term housing facility for users and other visitors, will be honored with a groundbreaking at noon on the site just west of Building 2. Fleming and Van Buuren will again appear, along with Facilities’ Deputy Director Jerry Ohearn. It is due for completion in the spring of 2009.