BCPS News
Alums Tour IIT Projects at Argonne
A group of alumni who have supported the sciences at IIT (Classes of 1949 to 1973) toured the university's BioCAT, MRCAT and SER-CAT beamlines at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory on Tuesday. They learned about IIT research in disease, materials, energy and the environment, and they marveled at the power and precision of the beamlines. Several said they'd never been to Argonne but had always been curious about this large U.S. Department of Energy facility.
"That was great fun," said Biology Professor Tom Irving, Director of IIT's Center for Synchrotron Radiation Research and Instrumentation (CSRRI) and Director of BioCAT (Biophysics Collaborative Access Team). "They were clearly an appreciative audience." He co-hosted the event with Physics Professor Carlo Segre, Deputy Director of MRCAT (Materials Research Collaborative Access Team).
Of IIT's approximately 30 research projects at Argonne, most are at the APS. This huge, 1,225-foot-diameter x-ray is this hemisphere's most brilliant and gives researchers the power to learn an unprecedented amount of information about the structure and function of materials and biological systems and how they change over time, from a millisecond to a week. It has numerous points of access or beamlines operated by the Department of Energy, various corporations, universities and other entities.
As director or member of multiple beamlines, IIT is responsible for raising funding for them, determining which outside researchers from all over the world can get perform their experiments on them, and helps these other scientists learn to use them — in addition to doing its own research and research collaborations on them.
Before the tour, Irving gave the alumni an overview of BioCAT and Segre did the same for MRCAT and SER-CAT. BioCAT is funded by the National Institutes of Health and supports small- and wide-angle diffraction from biological fibers, small- and wide-angle scattering (SAXS and WAXS) from macromolecules in solution, and x-ray microprobe imaging.
Irving described IIT research at BioCAT, including Irving's work on the molecular basis of the Frank-Starling law of the heart; studies of insect flight muscle from living normal and mutant fruit flies during tethered flight; structural studies of the filament lattice of the giant waterbug; and more. He also discussed the research of Joseph Orgel, Assistant Professor of Biology, including his groundbreaking work in collagen structural studies.
Segre talked about how MRCAT, run by a consortium of universities and businesses, supports research in materials, energy and environmental science, addressing scientific questions on complex materials in situ (in place) using such experimental capabilities as transmission and fluorescence X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS); reflectivity and reflective mode XAS; microbeam elemental mapping and spectroscopy; and more.
He described some of his own research, such as in-situ structural studies of catalytic materials for use in fuel cells, and that of other IIT faculty, such as Jeff Terry. He also briefly described Associate Professor of Biology Andy Howard's research and involvement with SER-CAT (Southeast Regional Collaborative Access Team), for the study of the structure and function of disease-related proteins.
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