On Tuesday, May 20, Professor Kiyoshi Ueda, from Tohoku University in Japan and Shanghai Tech University in China, gave a seminar at MAX IV. The seminar was part of a visit that also included beamtime at FlexPES using the ICE reaction microscope together with his Chinese colleagues. Kiyoshi Ueda has been in the synchrotron world for a long time and has co-authored more than 500 scientific papers.
“I am very old, and I have experienced all synchrotron generations,” Ueda starts his presentation with a laugh.
In his presentation, “Catching atoms in action,” he shows examples of techniques for measuring the behaviours of molecules and clusters, especially using light from state-of-the-art, highly coherent synchrotrons and ultrafast pulses. One example is a free-electron laser delivering a below-ten-femtosecond X-ray pulse to a biomolecule. The pulse is just short enough to catch the molecules’ structure before it disintegrates.
After the talk, I asked Ueda what he thinks about his beamtime at MAX IV so far.
“Oh, we’re just getting started, but from what I’ve heard, I’m pretty sure it should be very good,” he says.
