Words from the Director Trevor Forsyth - read about the latest developments and news at LINXS!

A (belated) Happy New Year to all of you! At LINXS, we are looking forward to a busy spring term. We have an array of thematic activities, guest seminars, ongoing webinar series, and hosted events planned for the coming months. We are also looking into the details of our short, medium, and long term development plans. Very importantly for LINXS, we have just confirmed the recruitment of a very talented Activities Coordinator.

LINXS Director Trevor Forsyth. Photo: Kennet Ruona.

We are happy to see that the LINXS guest researcher programme is really picking up after the pandemic. In January, we welcomed the first of five guest researchers, Samuele Masoni, a PhD student in Medicinal Chemistry from the Department of Pharmacy at the University of Pisa. He is a junior fellow and has been invited to LINXS as part of the Integrated Pharmacology and Drug Discovery (IPDD) theme; he will stay at LINXS until June.

From April to June, he will be joined by Michael Adams from the University of Luxembourg, who will work with the New Materials theme, and from May to June, by Andreas Stadler, a senior scientist at Jülich Centre for Neutron Science (JCNS) at Forschungszentrum Jülich, who will also visit in connection with the IPPD theme. LINXS will also welcome Andrew Boothroyd as a guest researcher in May/June. Andrew is a Professor of Physics at the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford University, and a member of the LINXS SAB. Finally, Prof Carlos Campos, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil, is expected after the summer, from August to October, to work with the New Materials theme. During these visits, a number of seminars and events will be organised to highlight and promote particular areas of science and their engagement with MAX IV and ESS.

The forthcoming LINXS guest seminars are continuing of course. On the 13th February, Nicoló Dell’Unto, Professor in Archaeology, and scientific coordinator for the Lund University Digital Archaeology Laboratory, will give a seminar entitled Recording Visualizing and Interacting: Using Virtual Reality for Interpreting the Past. His lecture will be of wide general interest but perhaps of special interest to those of you working on geoarcheology related science. On the 28th March, Kristina Djinović Carugo, the new Head of the EMBL Grenoble Outstation, will give a more biological seminar on Order from disorder in sarcomeric Z-disks. On 30th March, Adam Hitchcock from McMaster University, in Canada will present on Recent advances in soft X-ray spectro-ptychography. You are most welcome to all these events, and please encourage others to come as well. If possible please use the registration facility so that we can make sure that enough coffee/snacks etc are available – but come anyway even if you have forgotten to do this!

We have published some reflections on two recent thematic events, the 2nd Time Resolved Structural Biology workshop, the final event within the Integrated Structural Biology (ISB) theme, and the Structure Based Drug Design meeting, within the IPDD theme. It is great to see that our events are plugging key gaps, and creating new and important national networks.

In other news, the LINXS SAB has been reviewing the applications to the new national and international Theme Call for which several applications were received. The review process has proceeded to the second stage and the final outcomes will be announced in the end of March. This is likely to result in the expansion of thematic activities and a broadening of the LINXS engagement and remit both nationally and internationally. In addition to this, LINXS has applied to the Swedish Research Council for funding to become a national Centre of Excellence. A LINXS Centre of Excellence would resource LINXS Themes driven by PIs from any institute in Sweden - something that strongly complements LINXS’ new open call development and our other development plans. We are currently discussing our move to the Science Village at Brunnshög with key potential contractors. LINXS on the Science Village will be placed directly between, and in close proximity to, the MAX IV and ESS facilities. This is all happening at a crucial time during which growth in the area associated with institutes all over the country and beyond is being planned.

A final note on our LINXS calendar: a new calendar has been installed on the website that should help find information about LINXS events and other activities – bear with us while this is populated and automated. Not everything is there just yet!

Take care and stay safe!