Patrick Wang's year in industry success at Diamond

For many students, a year in industry is a chance to bridge the gap between academic theory and real-world application. For Patrick Wang, that bridge led him to Diamond Light Source.

He not only contributed to scientific projects but also co-authored two published papers as a result - an impressive achievement for a placement year. We talked to Patrick to get his insights into the 2023 programme and how the experience shaped his professional ambitions.

During his year at Diamond, Patrick joined the Optics and Metrology Group, working on a technical project that focussed on developing simulation tools for soft X-ray beamlines.

“During beamline design and operation, the optics group carries out ray-tracing calculations of the beamline along with its instrumentation to predict the performance of the beamline. Unique to soft X-ray beamlines, there’s an important component called the plane grating monochromator,” Patrick explained.

The plane grating monochromator ensures the beam on the sample is monochromatic, allowing the isolation of specific interactions between the light and sample without interference from other wavelengths.

“There were significant technical challenges when it comes to carrying out ray-tracing simulations for this component. It’s complex geometry and dependence on several variables meant it was seldom fully modelled. My project was to write computer codes that fully modelled the intricate geometries of this component such that systematic and holistic ray-tracings can be done for soft X-ray beamlines,” Patrick explained.

Patrick’s undergraduate background was in chemistry and physics, and while he had a decent understanding of the principles of optics, the project involved elements he had not previously been exposed to. While this proved challenging, he started doing research, learning new software, the technical terminology and the underlying related physics. His supervisors guided him through this process and were a great help.

The project’s original brief was to produce code for ray-tracing simulations. However, the project developed further, resulting in two peer-reviewed publications.

The Optics and Metrology Group celebrating with Patrick at the end of his placement.

“At the beginning of the project we had planned, if things went well, one publication would be about the code that I would write to simulate a full soft X-ray beamline. But during the project, I found myself rewriting an in-house tool previously used at Diamond which calculated the geometry of the plane grating monochromator. I had, almost by accident, stumbled upon a way of making the software portable with a front-end graphical user interface. My supervisors and I realised that there’s no such tool publicly available and what I had written worked very well and it’s very easy to use. So we wrote our first paper informing the wider synchrotron community that this tool is available to use at PGMweb: A Plane Grating Monochromator Simulation Tool,” Patrick said.

The paper,  PGMweb: an online tool for visualising the X-ray beam path through plane grating monochromators, was published in the Journal of Synchrotron Radiation.

The second paper, An automated and robust method for modelling X-ray beamlines with plane grating monochromators, expanded on the originally planned ray-tracing work.

Patrick explained: “The second paper was more in line with what we had planned and focussed on the ray-tracing result using my code. The scope of the simulation had been expanded significantly as I was able to parallelise the simulations. This allowed us to directly compare the simulation to flux measurements done at the B07 beamline. Our calculations demonstrated an excellent agreement to the measurement which showed that our novel method is indeed very robust.”

The time spent at Diamond had a lasting impression on Patrick and helped the influence his career aspirations. He is currently studying for a DPhil in chemistry at the University of Oxford; his doctoral project aims to develop new theory and experiments at proving electron correlation effects using advanced light sources.

When asked about the most rewarding part of the year in industry, Patrick shared: “The people I met during my year in industry has been the most rewarding part. The opportunity to meet and work with incredibly kind people and become friends with them has been the best part of working at Diamond. 

“It was a big change to be in an environment where most of your work will be independent. For me this transition was smooth. My supervisors and I would have regular meetings where we discussed the things to try and a general direction of the project as well as reflecting on the progress we have made.

“I can’t speak more highly about the programme and Diamond itself as a place to work. Don’t be intimidated if you don’t know all there is to know about the project you are applying to. You are here to learn and everyone here wants you to succeed.”