Engaging with Diamond

Communications Team

Diamond’s science and engineering continued to inspire and excite in the UK in 2014, as we built on our successful programme of events and opportunities for the public and schools. With skill development in STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) a key issue in education, our role in bringing young people into contact with science in the real world is more important than ever. For the public, as Diamond continues to produce amazing science with applications which impact on everyday life, having access to the scientists and engineers who make it possible is more important and more exciting than ever.

In 2014/15 we continued our strong and ever-increasing programme of schools events, welcoming more than 2,000 students to the facility.

Our long standing programme of schools visits for A-level students, the 'Inside Diamond' events, continue to provide an important and valued experience for students, and allows them to meet our scientists and engineers as well as see the machine and beamlines. We continued our successful collaboration with the Research Complex at Harwell’s Oxford Protein Production Facility (OPPF) and Imperial College’s Membrane Protein Laboratory (MPL) to deliver biology A-level days which allow students to undertake hands-on experiments in some of the UK’s most high-tech environments. This access to equipment and staff would be impossible inside a school classroom, and is a highly valued experience for students.

'Inside Diamond' public open day, June 2014.

Our collaborations with STFC continue also with 'Engineering Your Future' and 'Science in Your Future' events continuing to showcase the fantastic career opportunities available in STEM. We have worked with a wide variety of local science and engineering organisations; from Crown Packaging to the Mary Rose Trust, who deliver workshops as part of both of these events. 'Science in Your Future' is a girls-only event; bringing 100 GSCE stage students onto site each time, and aims to widen thinking on what careers in science can offer. 'Engineering Your Future' is aimed at A-level students, and promotes engineering subjects and associated careers. We hope to continue to expand in future years to other subject areas.

2015 sees the launch of an exciting new programme at Diamond; our work experience academy. Aimed at students aged 14-18, the scheme will initially bring 18 students into the facility, working on nine different projects. The scheme will be expanded in subsequent years, involving more students in a larger number of projects. We hope that the academy will inspire students from around the region into pursuing a career in science.

Our work with students doesn’t stop with schools, we have a large and expanding programme of undergraduate visits, with almost 700 students from a range of courses visiting Diamond. These opportunities provide an important additional context to undergraduate teaching, and encourage students to consider the links between their courses and possible avenues of further study later in their career.

As 2015 has been declared by UNESCO as the 'International Year of Light', Diamond is taking the opportunity to attend festivals and events around the region and beyond to celebrate the achievements and possibilities of synchrotron science.

At the Oxfordshire Science Festival we hosted a number of events, meeting members of the public at both the Oxford and Abingdon science fairs, and hosting a special film and discussion night entitled ‘Reflections and Revolutions’, co-hosted with the Nuffield Department of Medicine. We also hosted a talk in Abingdon with Chief Executive Andrew Harrison. Additionally, in March 2015 we continued to support the British Crystallographic Association (BCA) as they took part in the annual Big bang Fair, welcoming 70,000 students to the NEC in Birmingham.

'After Hours, Science Uncovered' event at the Natural History Museum, London, September 2014.

Our series of open days continues to welcome around 2,000 visitors each year, showcasing our science and bringing members of the public into parts of the facility usually inaccessible to visitors. We also welcome monthly community visits, for groups ranging from U3A groups to project managers. These community visits are a valuable part of our public engagement programme. In 2015, all of our visits will be celebrating the 'International Year of Light' as part of a rich programme of events, with large scale open days planned for summer 2015.

(Top) At the Oxford University Museum of Natural History for the closing of the Oxfordshire Science Festival, March 2015. (Bottom) Workshop for Centres for Doctoral Training (CDT) students, March 2015.

Over the last year, the programme of scientific and technical workshops and conferences has been busier than ever. During the summer of 2014 we hosted two large summer schools: the Synchrotron Radiation Summer School and the BCA-CCP4 Summer School; both of which were week-long residential courses providing students with introductions into synchrotron radiation and crystallography respectively. In total, the courses hosted 90 students and were oversubscribed by over 400%, illustrating the high demand for this type of practical-based course.

Late summer also saw Diamond hosting its annual SR User Meeting, where over 250 Users and staff were brought together across five topic-specific workshops. The two-day event included a keynote speech from Professor John Spence who reviewed the latest developments in single-particle imaging, serial nano-crystallography and snapshot solution scattering at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), Stanford, California, with the long term aim of making a movie of molecular machines at work.

Diamond SR User Meeting, September 2014.

Late 2014 saw the first Diamond CCP4 Data Collection Workshop; an eightday long intensive residential course which gathered together leading experts in the field of MX to teach best practice in data collection and analysis to PhD students, postdocs and junior researchers.

Other events across the year included Medipix3, a workshop that gathered together members of the Medipix3 collaboration and the detector community for brainstorming and discussion sessions; XAS 2014, a workshop that teaches new and nearly new users of the Diamond spectroscopy beamlines how to perform XAS (X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy) experiments and how to process and analyse XAS data; and finally S4SAS III, a workshop that presented a day of introductory lectures to the various SAXS (Small Angle X-ray Scattering) techniques ideal for early career researchers as well as PhD students. This was followed by a main meeting, with keynote, contributed talks, posters and discussions on the latest results plus future prospects for SAXS at Diamond (I22, B21, I07, etc.) together with a perspective of the field from the wider international SAS community.