The 36th User Meeting took place 13-15 January, with nearly 400 participants gathering at the Scandic Star hotel in Lund. It was an engaging event to network and listen to inspiring presentations for beamline users, researchers, collaborators, and students, as well as opportunities to speak with meeting sponsors and instrument vendors.
Director Olof ‘Charlie’ Karis opened the User Meeting with facility highlights and news, including on the significant increase in scientific productivity from 2023, increased studies in life science research, production of the upcoming Annual Report, funding announcements, and developments of the MAX 4U accelerator upgrade.
During the plenary session, Magnus Berggren, organic electronics researcher at Linköping University and Director at WISE, Wallenberg Initiative Material Science for Sustainability, presented details on the WISE programme, where excellent materials scientists focus on sustainability in research. “Sustainability is a moving target in society, and so we follow this in our programmes,” explained Berggren.
MAX IV Accelerator Division Director Pedro Fernandes Tavares explains the present state of MAX IV accelerators, and some of the exciting concepts part of the MAX 4U project. “MAX 4U is a surgical intervention that provides an outstanding performance improvement while maintaining much of the existing hardware,” said Tavares.
Attendees heard highlights with activities from the MAX IV beamlines from Science Director Joachim Schnadt at the User Meeting. MicroMAX beamline for structural biology is among the 16 beamlines ready for exciting new research.
Anders Ynnerman, Professor of Scientific Visualization at Linköping University and Chairman of InfraVis, the National Research Infrastructure for Data Visualization, presented visuals of immersive environments of science, for example, the mitochondria, human brain, and AI generated Covid-19 video from scientific data.
MAX IV Deputy Director Yngve Cerenius covered details of the new beamlines proposal process. FASM, The Association for Synchrotron Radiation Users at MAX IV, announced the election of its new board.
On day two of the User Meeting, parallel sessions took place for attendees to join various presentations on themed topics including: quantum materials, drug discovery and formulation, low density matter, life science collaborations, environment and climate, and in-situ and operando.
During the session on quantum materials, for example, there was discussion about electronically unconventional materials and the properties that they may show such as magnetism and superconductivity. Available at MAX IV, ARPES is an experimental technique often used to study the electronic properties, and both hard and soft X-rays have an important role here.
At an in-situ and operando session, gels were presented with an aim to tune these systems across length scales as they have many applications to hold a substance and then release it under the right conditions, such as for drug delivery. SAXS technique has an important role to play in studying their properties under different conditions.
The final day of the programme, Director Karis, Pedro Fernandes Tavares, and speakers gave detailed talks on the MAX 4U update. The winners of the User Meeting 2025 Poster Award were also announced.
Lorenzo Tallarini and Stefano Toso from the Lund University Chemical Physics Department were awarded for their poster entitled: Probing Ultrafast Structural Dynamics in Perovskite Mesocrystals. “This study is relevant to establish light-matter interactions in nanostructured semiconductors, that are promising materials for applications in electronics and quantumoptics,” said Tallarini.
MAX IV would again like to thank our generous sponsors for enabling lower event costs and higher attendance for the 36th User Meeting.
