On April 14, 2010, ChemMatCARS staff members Jim Viccaro and Yu-Sheng Chen participated in the inauguration of a new research center in Denmark in which ChemMatCARS will be an active partner.
The Centre for Materials Crystallography (CMC) at Aarhus University in Denmark is an international collaboration funded by a five-year, €6.7-million grant from the Danish National Research Foundation. The Centre’s mission is to explore the correlations between the molecular and atomic structures of materials and the properties we experience on a larger scale. New materials designed to exploit these correlations are envisioned for energy production, pollution prevention, digital storage media, and an extensive range of nanotechnology applications.
Led by principal investigator Professor Bo Brummerstedt Iversen, D.Sc., the Centre’s staff will include more than 80 scientists and research students, about half of whom will be located at Aarhus. The collaboration emphasizes use of the world’s most advanced x-ray and neutron sources, and students and staff will be encouraged to gain research experience at these sophisticated facilities through extended visits.
The CMC is funded by the Danish National Research Council and includes partners from Gottingen University, Germany; the University of Western Australia, Perth; Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie Molecolar, Milan, Italy; Oak Ridge National Laboratory; ChemMatCARS, The University of Chicago; and SPring8, Japan. Jim Viccaro is a co-investigator on the program, and the ChemMatCARS advanced crystallography facility, led by Yu-Sheng Chen, will be an active partner in the Centre’s work.
ChemMatCARS will collaborate on projects involving advanced crystallography and high-precision mapping of electronic charge within materials, and a CMC postdoctoral scholar will be based at ChemMatCARS to support these studies.
The Centre was instituted in January 2010, and researchers have already visited ChemMatCARS. An official inauguration was held on April 14 at the Centre’s newly renovated and equipped space at Aarhus University.
More information is available at the Centre’s Web Site.