Peer Review Process

The Director of Science and Science Managers meet to assign each proposal for General User access to an appropriate member of the PRC. The PRC members are then responsible to review their assigned proposals and to assign each proposal to at least two additional external reviewers based on matching criteria including subject area(s), technique(s), and spectral range.

Peer Review Committee Members:

Dr. Alessandra Gianoncelli | Elettra Synchrotron Light Source

Chair

Adam Gillespie | University of Guelph

Adam Gillespie is a faculty member at the University of Guelph's School of Environmental Sciences.  He is a soil chemist with a research focus on soil organic matter characterization, mapping and modelling. He has a strong interest in using innovative research and instrumentation to link land management with soil health and sustainable land use.

Andi Barbour | Brookhaven National Laboratory

Angelo Malachias | Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG)

Anne Bonin | Paul Scherrer Institute

Bas Vriens | Queen's University

Chongyin Yang | Dalhousie University

Chisu Kim | Hydro Quebec

Daniel Olive | Los Alamos National Laboratory

Daniel Olive is a scientist and the Surface Science Team Leader in the Nuclear Materials Science (MST-16) Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. in physics from Illinois Institute of Technology in 2012, where his research focused on the use of synchrotron radiation, primarily extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS), to characterize materials of interest to nuclear energy. This led to a postdoctoral position in the Heavy Elements Nuclear and Radiochemistry Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory studying fundamental and environmental actinide chemistry using EXAFS, followed by a Seaborg Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship at Los Alamos. Daniel’s current research is concerned with measuring and modeling radiation damage in materials, especially as it relates to self-irradiation damage in plutonium and the effects of plutonium aging.

Grant Bunker | Illinois Institute of Technology

Grant B. Bunker is Professor and Chair of Physics at Illinois Institute of Technology.  In 1977 he started working on metalloprotein XAFS in the lab of Edward A. Stern at the University of Washington. He is perhaps best known for basic work on disordered systems and multiple scattering in XANES. Grant is the younger brother of Bruce A. Bunker, who also has worked very extensively in the XAFS field with similar pedigree.  In the 90’s Grant was the founding director of the BioCAT facility at the Advanced Photon Source, subsequent to an initiative by Richard Korszun;  Tom Irving has served as director of BioCAT in recent decades.  Grant later worked with Ph.D. students (Dimakis, Khelashvili, Tannazi, Karanfil) in the late 90’s and early 2000s on DFT calculations of multiple scattering DWFs, automated/direct methods for XAFS data analysis e.g. genetic algorithms and regularization, robust determination of chemical speciation and x-ray propagation in complex media, and development of bent crystal Laue analyzers for fluorescence detection. He is president of Quercus X-ray Technologies, LLC, which makes BCLAs when possible.  GB is the author of “Introduction to XAFS (A Practical Guide to X-ray Absorption Fine Structure Spectroscopy)” 1st edition, Cambridge (2010), and is co-organizer with Carlo Segre of the mostly annual APS/IIT XAFS summer schools over the last decade.

Jeff Terry | Illinois Institute of Technology

Jeff Terry is a professor of physics at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where his main research focus is on energy systems. His group works to develop new ways of dealing with radioactive waste; understand radiation damage mechanisms in materials; and synthesize novel materials for energy storage and conversion. He also simulates the economic costs of building new energy systems, including small modular nuclear reactors. Prior to joining the faculty at Illinois Tech, he was a staff scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. There, he worked on the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), and was a member of the team that sent the first waste shipment to WIPP. He is a former scientific director of the Advanced Test Reactor National Scientific User Facility. He is currently an editor of the journal, Applied Surface Science. Terry received his doctorate in chemical physics from Stanford University in 1997 after obtaining a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1990.

Lars Ehm | Stony Brook University

Ming Yi | Rice University

Naoto Yagi | SPring-8/JASRI

Peter Kopittke | University of Queensland

Peter Kopittke is Associate Professor at The University of Queensland. As a Soil Scientist, Peter is actively involved in the management and conservation of soil; one of the basic elements which sustain life. Whilst soil takes hundreds or thousands of years to form, it can be destroyed in a matter of years if not managed correctly. Whilst Peter's research spans the areas of agricultural production, water chemistry, and waste disposal, it currently focuses on (i) improving plant nutrition through efficient and environmentally friendly use of fertilisers in soils, (ii) the toxicity of trace metals to plants, and (iii) overcoming nutritional constraints through the use of foliar fertilisers.

Dr. Raul de Oliveira Freitas | Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory

Staff scientist at the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory (LNLS), Dr. Raul Freitas is mainly involved in the fields of Synchrotron Infrared Nanospectroscopy, near-field optics and interferometry, IR beamlines optical design and Nano-optics of quantum materials. Since 2012, he is in charge of the IR spectroscopy research group at LNLS and coordinator of the IMBUIA beamline at Sirius. The researcher is interested in studies related to nanoscale vibrational properties of materials in general. Prior to enter the infrared nanospectroscopy area, he worked in the field of synchrotron X-ray diffraction applied to the study of nanostructured optoelectronic materials, which was the subject of his PhD jointly achieved at the University of Sao Paulo (USP) and at University of Guelph (UoG/Canada) and lately the subject of his Post-Doc in a collaborative project between LNLS and Hewlett Packard Labs (USA). Still as a Post-Doc, worked briefly as a visitor research in the SSL-ESRF (France). Before the academic life, the researcher worked for almost 10 years as a designer in the engineering department of an international company related to the fuels distribution business.

Shathi Akhter | Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada / Government of Canada

Dr. Akhter is a Research Scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) in Indian Head, SK. She is leading an agro-ecosystems health research program with a focus on non-crop areas in agricultural landscapes. In the past, diversified farming systems were the norm in Canadian agriculture; however, with increased farm size, higher inputs, and an aim to maximize crop profitability, agro-ecosystems have been simplified, resulting in highly modified landscapes compared with 50 years ago. Dr. Akhter investigates the impact of modern agricultural systems and practices on biodiversity, habitat ecology, wetlands, water quality, soil quality, and soil health. She is interested in developing farm-level management practices that support crop yield & quality and, biodiversity & other ecosystem services.
In addition, Dr. Akhter has a strong interest in the application of synchrotron techniques in agriculture and environmental research.

Sylvain Bohic | Inserm

Sylvain Bohic is a senior researcher at the French National Institute of Health & Medical Research. He is also scientific collaborator at the European synchrotron (ESRF) for nanochemical imaging development in biology and cellular analysis. He has > 15 years of experience in synchrotron elemental imaging at the cell level, he did some of pioneer work on single-cell imaging using synchrotron X-ray microprobe. His research interests and expertise are on cryo-cellular cryo-preparation and mesoscale metal imaging in biological tissues, and, in cells using synchrotron-based methods and micro/ nano spectromicroscopy techniques for quantitative elemental imaging and speciation, with a particular focus on the role of metals in neurodegenerative diseases and in the biological mechanisms of metallo-organic molecules or nanoparticles in targeting cancer cells.

Xianghui Xiao | Brookhaven National Laboratory

Proposals for macromolecular crystallography (MX) are reviewed by at least two members of the PRC for MX.

Peer Review Committee Members:

Gil Privé | University of Toronto, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre

Lisa Keefe | IMCA-CAT, APS

Maksymilian Chruszcz | Michigan State University