Speaker: Laurent Chapon and David Stuart, Diamond Light Source, UK

Abstract: We will present the Diamond Light Source, its operation, the experimental capabilities available to academic and industrial users, and the scientific programme in Physical and Life Sciences. We will also present the plan for Diamond-II, a programme aiming to upgrade the synchrotron, beamlines and computational capabilities by 2026.

Biography Laurent Chapon: Laurent Chapon received his PhD from the University of Montpellier in 2000 for his work on thermoelectric materials. In 2001 he worked on molecular magnets and magnetic oxides as a post-doctoral research scientist at the Materials Science Division of Argonne National Laboratory (USA), and then at Hahn-Meitner Institute in Berlin (Germany). He joined the ISIS neutron source in 2002 and became head of the crystallography and engineering group in 2008 before joining the Institut Laue Langevin in Grenoble (France) in 2011 as a senior fellow and then head of the diffraction group. Since 2016, Laurent is director of Physical Sciences at the Diamond Light source, the UK national synchrotron and programme director of the Diamond-II programme. In the last 20 years, Laurent’s research has been focussed on understanding the properties of complex magnetic systems and multifunctional oxides, using scattering techniques available at neutron and synchrotron sources.   

Biography David Stuart: David Stuart is the Life Science Director at Diamond Light Source and is responsible for both beamlines (X-ray, IR and UV) as well as the national centre for cryo-EM (eBIC) which is a key part of Diamond’s life science programme. In addition to this he works on the structure of viruses, structural vaccinology and anti-viral drug discovery. His group have been part of international collaborations studying the structures of the SARS-CoV-2 proteins and interactions with antibodies. The research provides better understanding of how antibodies work against the virus and how variant viruses escape some of these antibodies. The teams at Diamond have also been involved in finding new drugs and helping to identify existing drugs that could be repurposed in the fight against COVID-19. David is also Professor of Structural Biology at the University of Oxford, and Director of Instruct-ERIC.