26 April - 7 May, 2010

The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy

Chapter Secretary Naira Grigoryan participated in the School on Synchrotron and Free-Electron-Laser Sources and their Multidisciplinary Applications.

The scope of the school, generally aimed at PhD students and young researchers, provided basic knowledge about functioning mechanisms of synchrotrons & FEL’s and related instrumentation, as well as a description of state-of-the-art research techniques and their multidisciplinary applications. The School consisted of two 5-day working weeks with morning and afternoon lectures and seminars, complemented by practical training and demonstrations at SR and FEL facilities at Elettra.

Synchrotron Radiation (SR) based research techniques play a pivotal role across a wide range of disciplines in science and technology, attracting fast growing user communities from physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, environmental sciences, materials science and engineering. The rapid and continuing expansion of SR based research is reflected by the growing number of synchrotron facilities all over the world. At present emerging new light sources such as the IR, VUV, and x-ray free-electron lasers (FEL’s) with unprecedented coherence, peak brightness, and pulse length are opening new opportunities for development and research. Furthermore, this facility-based research is genuinely international, with a large number of scientists complementing abroad the research done at their home laboratories using the unique instrumentation, and participating in development of new tools for interdisciplinary research at these large-scale facilities.