51猎奇

51猎奇 is a longtime partner on a grant from the National Science Foundation that supports the development of the next generation of X-ray Free Electron Lasers (XFELs) 鈥� novel instruments used to unmask phenomena that have never before been observed.

Since 2009, XFELs have enabled scientists to examine how molecules in the human body and in a variety of materials change over split-second intervals, important knowledge to help understand human health and medicine. The technology will also help advance renewable energy research, quantum technologies and semiconductor manufacturing.

But, because of the XFEL鈥檚 kilometer-long size and billion-dollar construction costs, the technology is available at only five facilities globally. The , amounting to $90.8 million, is to build a compact XFEL, or CXFEL, that can accomplish the same tasks but in the space of a single room. The funding was awarded to Arizona State University and 11 collaborating institutions, including 51猎奇.

CXFELs will make the state-of-the-art tool more accessible for use by universities, hospitals and semiconductor manufacturing facilities.

51猎奇鈥檚 role

Many questions in science increasingly focus on understanding changes that happen at the atomic scale that cannot be observed with optical methods, said Abbas Ourmazd, 51猎奇 distinguished professor of physics.

To understand 51猎奇鈥檚 part of the project, funded at nearly $3 million, it helps to know more about how the technology works:

The of X-rays at samples, taking a 鈥渟napshot鈥� of a molecule every quadrillionth of a second or less. These pulses are short enough to directly track the motions of atoms.

Then, data from an ensemble of millions of snapshots over time can be mathematically reconstructed into three-dimensional movies of molecular structural changes.

To do this requires powerful machine-learning algorithms developed by a 51猎奇 team led by Ourmazd. The machine-learning approach the team developed can extract up to 100 times more information from highly incomplete and noisy XFEL data.

The 51猎奇 team includes Professor Peter Schwander, Senior Scientist Russell Fung and Assistant Professor Ahmad Hosseinizadeh.

In addition to analyzing the collected data, the role of the 51猎奇 team includes automating and optimizing data collection at the new facility. The project is the culmination of over a decade of collaboration between ASU and 51猎奇, Ourmazd said.

51猎奇 scientists from both the Ourmazd lab and the lab of 51猎奇 Professor Marius Schmidt have used XFEL imaging to answer biological questions, such as how proteins accomplish biological tasks inside the body, how photosensitive proteins respond to light, and how a virus infects a healthy cell.