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YSIG Spotlight Series No.2: October 25, 2022

Allen G. Oliver | University of Notre Dame

I have been interested in X-ray crystallography since I was first introduced to it as a graduate student at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. Crystallography became a significant focus during my doctoral studies when, concurrently, I accepted a staff position in the X-ray Facility at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Since coming to the United States, I have followed an academic career path in X-ray crystallography. In the course of my duties as a facility crystallographer and research professor, I participate in all aspects of crystallography including facility management, instrument maintenance, data collection, structure solution and refinement, publishing, grantsmanship, and teaching activities. Perhaps most rewarding is teaching crystallography to younger researchers and providing them with the tools to become better scientists.

 

Corie Ralston | Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

Corie Ralston holds a B.S. in Physics from the University of  California at Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in  Biophysics   from the  University of California at Davis. She completed a post-  doctoral fellowship at  Brookhaven National   Laboratory  during which she helped develop the method of X-ray foot printing as a structural investigation technique for proteins and nucleic acids. She started at  the Advanced Light Source synchrotron (ALS) at   Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) as a beamline scientist in crystallography, and over the years grew to managing the crystallography beamlines in the role as head of the Berkeley Center for Structural Biology. More recently, she became the Facility Director for the Biological Nanostructures facility at the Molecular Foundry, another user facility at LBNL. She is also actively developing the method of X-ray foot printing at the ALS.
 
 

James Kaduk | Poly Crystallography Inc.

Jim Kaduk is President of Poly Crystallography Inc., a  company which provides crystallographic   problem    solving   and consulting services. He is also a Research  Professor of Chemistry at Illinois  Institute of Technology, and a   Senior Research Scientist (Physics) at North Central College. He   began his crystallographic career as an   undergraduate at Notre Dame. After obtaining a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry at Northwestern in 1977, he joined Amoco Chemicals and did catalysis R&D for eight years. Through a number of corporate changes he ran the X-ray diffraction lab at Amoco/BP/Ineos from 1985-2009. The lab characterized a very wide range of materials, including catalysts, inorganics, corrosion deposits, organics, and polymers. Jim is well known for his expertise in solving and refining crystal structures using powder diffraction data, and for combining crystallography and quantum mechanics to understand not just where the atoms are, but why they are there. Jim is Treasurer of the International Centre for Diffraction Data, the organization which produces the Powder Diffraction File database, and is a past Chairman of its Board of Directors. He is a former treasurer of the American Crystallographic Association and served that organization in many other roles. He is a Co-Editor of Volume H of International Tables for Crystallography on powder diffraction, and author of multiple chapters. He is a consultant to the IUCr Commission on Powder Diffraction, and a member of the Commission on Crystallographic Nomenclature and the Committee for the Maintenance of the CIF Standard (COMCIFS). He is a co-editor of Powder Diffraction and Advances in X-ray Analysis. He is a member of the faculties of the ACA’s summer course, the ICDD’s Clinics on Advanced Methods in XRD and the Rietveld Method, and teaches short courses and workshops around the world. He has been a member of the Northwestern University Library Board of Governors since 2001. Jim received the 2021 Barrett Award from the Denver X-ray Conference for his contributions to the field of powder diffraction, the 2017 Jenkins Award for lifetime achievement in the advancement of the use of X-rays in materials analysis, and is a Distinguished Fellow of ICDD. In 2020 he received the McMurdie Award from ICDD for his contributions to the Powder Diffraction File. His > 350 published papers center on powder crystallography, and he has contributed > 1000 patterns to the Powder Diffraction File.