• The SSRL Users' Organization Executive Committee represents the scientific user community to the SSRL administration, the SSRL Science Policy Board and the DOE in matters of operation, policy and improvements.
• Members serve a two-year term.
• Members are elected by the SSRL user community via majority vote.

Chris Hill: Associate Professor of Biochemistry, University of Utah. Research interests include protein crystallography, structure and function of HIV proteins, and the regulation of intracellular proteolysis. In the last year we have collected data at SSRL for structure determination by MAD, refinement at moderately high (1.7 Å) resolution, and for MIR structure determination of a large (1.1 MDa) complex.

Todd Hufnagel: Asst. Professor, Dept of Materials Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins U. Research emphasizes sturcture-property relationships in metallic glasses and nanocrystalline materials using a variety of techniques. These include small-angle x-ray scattering, anomalous scattering, high temperature powder diffraction studies of phase transformation in real time and EXAFS.

James Penner-Hahn: Professor of Chemistry, University of Michigan. Research focuses on x-ray absorption spectroscopy of metalloproteins and organometallic reagents.

Martina Ralle: Senior postdoctoral associate at the Oregon Graduate Institute. We collect EXAFS data ~ 3 x a year at SSRL on biological samples, namely proteins that contain metal centers such as cytochrome c oxidase. In a collaboration with the U. of Tennessee and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, I worked on the powder diffraction beamline, collecting data of polymer model compounds.

Bernhard Rupp: Professor of Molecular Structural Biology and Head of Macromolecular Crystallography Group at Lawrence-Livermore National Lab. Current research interests cover aspects of advanced crystallographic techniques and computing such as MAD phasing of complex structures, maximum likelihood methods, automated model building and refinement techniques. Specific projects include lipoproteins and lipid metabolism, chlostridial neurotoxins, virulence factors, repair proteins and antibody complexes.

David Salt: Assistant professor in the Chemistry Dept. of Northern Arizona University. Research interests are in the molecular mechanisms involved in Ni, Zn and Se hyperaccumulation by plants. Has had an active research collaboration at SSRL for the past five years investigating the in vivo speciation of metals in plant tissues using both XANES and EXAFS. Developing micro and scanning techniques to investigate the spacial distribution of metal species, with high resolution, in intact plant tissues.

Bob Scott: Professor and Head of Chemistry and Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, U. of Georgia. Research interests involve the molecular basis of biological function and recognition, with an emphasis on metallobiology, structural biology, and biophysics. Involved in the use of synchrotron radiation in x-ray absorption spectroscopy of metals in biology since 1979.

Sam Traina: Professor of Natural Resources and Geological Sciences at Ohio State U. Current and future work at SSRL involves XAFS measurements of Pd, Cd, Cu and Ni interactions with bacteria, transgenic algae cells, and with mineral-oxide surfaces. Also continuing work on arsenate and chromate reactions with alkaline solids and starting new work on Al-XANES studies of Al-substituted oxides.

Vittal Yachandra: Staff scientist at Lawrence-Berkeley National Laboratory. Main field of research focuses on biological XAS of biological system.

Tony Van Buuren: Staff scientist (term employee) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the department of Chemistry and Material Science. I have worked extensively at SSRL for the past four years. Research interest is the use of the synchrotron radiation to characterize the change in electronic structure observed in semiconductor nanostructures.

Serena Debeer: currently working on her Ph.D. in Chemistry at Stanford U. Uses a combination of ligand K-edge and metal K- and L-edge X-ray Absorption spectroscopy to probe the electronic and geometric structure of metalloproteins.. Experimental work is done primarily on beamlines 6-2, 7-3, and 10-1.

Paul Foster: I am currently a graduate student at UCSF in the macromolecular structure group. Research interests cover protein-RNA interactions, enzyme specificity and mechanism and x-ray crystallography. Currently studying tRNA modification and mechanistic studies of the enzyme tRNA pseudouridine synthase I.

Kira Misura: a third year graduate student at Stanford U. in the structural biology department. Research techniques include MAD experiments and high pressure Xenon experiments. Presently working on a large protein complex that I managed to crystallize over a year ago.

Tom Trainor: currently a fourth year graduate student in the Surface and Aqueous Geochemistry group at Stanford University. Research is primarily focused on the study of metal ion sorption on mineral surfaces with XAFS spectroscopy.

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