For most people, X rays bring medical imaging to mind, while for astronomers they provide one window into the cosmos. This talk is focused in a different direction: using nanofocusing optics, and computational imaging methods, to view detail in cells and gain insights into the role of trace metals. By freezing cells quickly (using advances recognized by the 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry), one can preserve structure and chemistry and minimize radiation damage limitations. This has been enabled by increases in x-ray brightness at a pace faster than Moore’s law in computing, with the next factor of 100 coming from a $700 million upgrade of the Advanced Photon Source (a synchrotron light source at Argonne Lab). One future challenge involves extending these results to tissues and organs, so that one might even consider making a map of the connections in a whole mouse brain. This will require a new generation of x-ray detectors, and advances in the physics and computation of image reconstruction - as well as resources such as exascale supercomputer Aurora planned for operation at Argonne in 2022. The future is bright!
Seminar Speaker: Chris Jacobsen, Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University
Host: Goswami
Keywords: Physics, Astronomy, Seminar, Colloquium