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NEWS
March 2024 ESRFnews
User Meeting celebrates the heights
of synchrotron X-ray science
This year’s was Sette’s 16th and final
user meeting as director general. (He
will be succeeded by Jean Daillant in
September.) During his tenure the
ESRF has undergone a transformative
upgrade programme, culminating in
the launch of the Extremely Brilliant
Source in 2020 An overarching
emphasis of this years meeting was the
need to capitalise on this worldleading
experimental technology
Indeed statistics presented by Gema
MartínezCriado the ESRF director
of research for condensed matter and
physical and material sciences support
the notion that the ESRFEBS is
well into an era of high scientific
productivity In the first half of the
past year she said 46 beamlines have
hosted over 1100 user experiments
and over 8800 experimental shifts
Of these experiments, she added, over
450 have taken place via some degree
of remote access – a protocol once
restricted to the macromolecular-
crystallography community, but
now increasingly adopted by other
scientists due to the speed and
convenience of obtaining results
The plenary session of the meeting
provided further evidence of cutting
edge science In the morning Beatrice
Vallone the head of the structural
biology group at the Sapienza
University of Rome in Italy presented
some of her recent findings on the
interaction of the human transferrin
receptor1 CD71 protein with
ferritin a hollow spherical nanocage
that is vital for storing iron in the
nontoxic form of iron oxide inside
cells Ferritin dissembles in an acidic
“The higher somebody climbs, the
farther he sees. The one who sees
farther, dreams longer.” So said the
pioneering Italian climber Walter
Bonatti – and so he was quoted by
the ESRF director general, Francesco
Sette, at this year’s ESRF User
Meeting on 6 February
It was a fitting quote Arriving at
their destination at the base of the
Chartreuse Mountains visitors to the
ESRF cannot help but raise their eyes
skywards to the surrounding alpine
vista But of course the main attraction
for them is a very different kind of
ascent one that takes them to the
pinnacle of Xray instrumentation
The ESRF upgrade programme in
general but particularly the EBS has
changed the paradigm of synchrotron
Xray science said Sette
E S R F / D E L P H I N E C H E N E V I E R
“Ten ESRF
users have so
far won grants
from the ERC
based on EBS
capabilities”