Please join us for the Inaugural Triangle SAXS Workshop!

When: Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Where: Duke University
Schiciano Auditorium
Fitzpatrick CIEMAS Building

Directions      

Parking is available at the Bryan Center.

Click here to register

AGENDA

8:30 – 9:00 Arrival, Coffee

9:00 – 9:05 Welcome (Bob Rose, Mark Walters, Stefan Zauscher)

9:05 – 9:50 Anton Paar SAXSESSmc² (Gerd Langenbucher, Anton Paar)

9:50-10:00 Questions and Short Break

10:00-10:45 SAXSLAB Ganesha 300XL (Scott Barton and Karsten Joensen, Saxslab)

10:45-11:15 Questions and Coffee Break

11:15-12:00 Soundbites (short presentations by participants about research and interest in SAXS, Wiersma coordinating)

12:00-1:00 Lunch and Networking

1:00-1:30 Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony

1:30-2:00 SMIF Tour and SAXS Instrumentation (Mark Walters, Gerd Langenbucher, Scott Barton, Karsten Joensen)

2:00-2:10 Questions and Short Break

2:10-3:10 Talk 1 “Introduction to SAXS, Applications and Data Classification” (Peter Worsch, Anton Paar)

3:10-3:30 Coffee Break

3:30-4:30 Talk 2 “Pore Structure and Fluid Sorption in Ordered Mesoporous Silica: New Insight from in-situ Small-Angle X-Ray Scattering” (Gerhard Findenegg, TU-Berlin)

4:30-5:00 Networking and User Group Meeting (discussion about hands-on workshops on May 15-16, 2013)

5:00 Adjourn

In an effort, spearheaded by Triangle MRSEC, we received support through the NSF-MRI program for the purchase of Small Angle X-Ray Scattering (SAXS) instrumentation. The state-of-the-art instruments will serve the greater Research Triangle community for research and education, and will be housed in Duke’s Shared Materials Instrumentation Facility (SMIF).

Two, complementary instruments are on order: a slit-collimated SAXSess MC2 from Anton Paar, and a point collimated GANESHA 300XL+ from SAXSlab. The SAXSess MC2 instrument has very high flux at the sample and will be used for scattering from solutions. The GANESHA 300XL+ is fully automated to cover a broad q-range, and will be used for SAXS, MAXS (medium angle X-ray scattering), WAXS (wide angle X-ray scattering), and GISAXS (grazing incidence X-ray scattering) measurements.

More Information: http://saxs.pratt.duke.edu

Rob Ferris just passed his Ph.D. Dissertation defense. Congratulations Rob, a job well done!

Congratulations Greg!

Greg presented his poster entitled “VISUALIZING LIPID REACTIVITY OF HIV-1 ANTIGEN AND NEUTRALIZING ANTIBODIES USING ATOMIC FORCE MICROSCOPY” at the 8th annual Center for Aids Research (CFAR) retreat at the Searle Center at Duke University.

Lei just passed her qualifier, and Eric passed his prelim examination.

Greg recently won a Burroughs Wellcome Fund 2012 Collaborative Research Travel Grant. This grant enables Greg to visit our research partner, Dr. Micheal Hirtz at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Working with Dr. Hirtz we seek to use dip-pen nanolithography (DPN) to write single supported lipid bilayers (SLBs) that mimic components of the native human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) lipid-envelope, and to achieve parallel deposition of SLB islands of different composition directly adjacent to each other using DPN.

Prof. Zauscher (PI) and Prof. Munir Alam (Co-PI) received an R21 award from NIH (NIAID) in the amount of $418k for their proposal entitled: HIV-1 Neutralizing Antibody Binding to Viral Membrane Mimics. The research is motivated by the recent identification of broadly neutralizing antibodies from HIV-1 infected subjects, whose antibody attributes include polyreactivity, i.e., the ability to react with both viral and host components, like membrane lipids. The proposed research pairs biophysical techniques with model lipid systems to define and understand the required lipid reactivity of neutralizing antibodies, and has important relevance in HIV-1 vaccine design for the induction of polyreactiv neutralizing antibody responses in humans.

Prof. Zauscher (PI), and Co-Pi’s, Dr. Mark Walters, and Profs. Bob Rose (NCSU) and Sergei Sheiko (UNC) received an award in the amount of $560k from the Major Research Instrumentation program of NSF. The grant is entitled: MRI Consortium: Acquisition of X-Ray Scattering Instrumentation – SAXS/WAXS/GISAXS and provides funding for the acquisition of a Small Angle X-Ray Scattering (SAXS) Instrument.

The SAXS facility will be established at Duke University’s Shared Materials Instrumentation Facility (SMIF) and will serve three major universities in the area: Duke University, North Carolina State University, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The instrument will serve researchers in materials science, structural biology, polymer and colloidal chemistry, chemical and biomedical engineering, and textiles engineering. The instrument capabilities will be broad to address the different needs of the users, and include wide angle X-ray scattering (WAXS) and grazing incidence small angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS).

Scattering techniques are essential to the research objectives of the newly established NSF Triangle Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC), focused on the study of soft matter components for programmable assembly. SAXS also contributes important insights to difficult structural biology problems, including the assembly of protein complexes and conformational flexibility.

Profs. Lingchong You (PI) and Stefan Zauscher (Co-PI) received an award from ONR in the amount of $667k for their proposal entitled: Programming Bacteria for Materials Fabrication. The proposed research represents an innovative application of synthetic biology, which enables the development of novel approaches to fabricate functional materials. As a proof-of-concept demonstration You and Zauscher have chosen the bacterial synthesis of CdS thin films because of the potential for their use in photovoltaic and printed microelectronic devices.

Prof. Zauscher co-chaired the 4th Gordon Research Conference on Biointerface Science in Les Diablerets, Switzerland, May 20 – 25, 2012.