SSRLUO 2020-2021 Executive Committee Members | Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource

The SSRL Users Executive Committee (UEC) encourages users to participate in SSRL events and contact UEC members to share feedback or suggestions:

Edward Snell, Hauptman Woodward Institute (SSRL UEC Chair)

Isabel Bogacz, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Michael Capano, Purdue University

Amy Cordones-Hahn, PULSE/SLAC/Stanford University

James P. Evans, Utah State University

Graham George, University of Saskatchewan (SSRL UEC Vice Chair)

Simon George, STAR Cryoelectronics LLC

Ailiena Maggiolo, California Institute of Technology

Emma McBride, SLAC Linear Accelerator Laboratory (Ex Officio, LCLS UEC)

Blaine Mooers, University of Oklahoma Health Science Center

Liane Moreau, Washington State University

Rebecca Page, University of Connecticut

Andrew Riscoe, Stanford University

Angelia Seyfferth, University of Delaware

Timothy Stemmler, Wayne State University (SSRL UEC Past Chair)

Kelly Lynn Summers, University of Saskatchewan

Linda Vogt, University of Saskatchewan

Beth Wurzburg, LBNL, Joint Genome Institute, Berkeley, CA (Ex Officio NUFO/SSURF)

Limei Zhang, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Leilani Conradson, SLAC (LCLS Liaison, Ex Officio)

Lisa Dunn, SLAC (SSRL Liason, Ex Officio)

Cathy Knotts, SLAC (SSRL Liaison, Ex Officio)

Isabel Bogacz, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA
Isabel Bogacz is a PhD candidate in physical chemistry at University of California; Berkeley. She obtained a B.S. in chemistry from St. Lawrence University in Canton NY. For her honors thesis she used Raman spectroscopy to make in situ measurements of formic acid in materials for artificial photosynthesis. As a member of the Yano, Yachandra, Kern lab at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab she studies photosystem II's involvement in the water-splitting reaction step of photosynthesis. She regularly uses SSRL to measure XES and XAS of photosystem II and model compounds to gain geometric and electronic structural inside into the mechanism of water-splitting.

Michael Capano, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
Michael Capano is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. Michael received his PhD from MIT. His research interests are microelectronics and nanotechnology.

Amy Cordones-Hahn, PULSE/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory/Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Amy Cordones-Hahn is an Associate Staff Scientist in the PULSE Institute at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Her research interests revolve around understanding how photoexcitation of electronic excited states drives chemical reactions of functional transition metal complexes, such as molecular photocatalysts. Amy uses time-resolved x-ray spectroscopy to resolve photochemical reactions in real-time and is interested in helping to grow these capabilities and build a larger ultrafast science user community at SSRL.

Lisa Dunn, SSRL User Research Administration, Menlo Park, CA
Lisa has worked at SSRL since 1986, and has been part of the User Research Administration team since 2000. Lisa manages the administration proposal review and scheduling for macromolecular crystallography and biological small angle scattering beam lines. Lisa earned her Bachelor of Science degree from San Jose State University.

James P. Evans, Utah State University,Logan, UT
James Evans is Professor of Geosciences at Utah State University. He received his Ph.D. and MS in Geology from Texas A&M University. His research interests include rock deformation from the micro scale to the map scale. Quantitative analysis of fluid-rock interactions as applied to earthquake processes, energy resources, and CO₂ sequestration.

Graham George, University of Saskatchevan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Graham George was educated at King's College London (B.Sc., 1979) and the University of Sussex (D. Phil., 1983). After postdoctoral fellowships at Sussex and Exxon Research & Engineering Co. in New Jersey USA, he continued at Exxon as a Principal Investigator. Graham was Exxon Participating Research Team spokesperson for both NSLS X10-C and SSRL 6-2 between 1988 and 1992. In 1992 Graham married fellow synchrotron radiation researcher Ingrid Pickering and moved to the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory where he held the position of Physicist until 2003. In 2003 he became full professor and Canada Research Chair in X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy at the University of Saskatchewan. Graham's first experiments using synchrotron radiation were on the EMBL XAS beamline at DESY Hamburg in April 1982, and his first experiments at SSRL were on Beam Line 7-3 in December 1983. Since that first run at SSRL Graham has taken part in over 185 different beamtime experiments at SSRL, and has published more than 270 papers using data collected at SSRL. His research bridges the chemical, the environmental and the life sciences and includes a career-long interest in metalloenzymes, toxic metals and fuel science.

Simon George, STAR Cryoelectronics LLC, Richmond, CA
Simon J. George has been an SSRL User for almost 30 years. After graduating from the Universities of London and East Anglia and working as a postdoc at East Anglia, he moved to the NSLS where he measured his first EXAFS spectrum. Since then he has been employed at the University of California, Davis, the John Innes Centre (Norwich, UK) and at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Much of his career has been focused on studying problems in biological chemistry and related materials, using synchrotron-based X-ray spectroscopies and X-ray imaging, together with laboratory techniques. While most of his synchrotron work has been performed at SSRL and the ALS, he has also measured data at the APS, CLS and SPring-8. Today, he owns his own scientific consulting company, Simon Scientific, which focuses on using synchrotron and related techniques, as well as developing novel spectroscopic instrumentation. He also collaborates with and is employed by a small business, STAR Cryoelectronics LLC, where he a Principal Investigator funded by the NIH to develop applications for cryogenic X-ray detectors for use in both the laboratory and at synchrotron lightsources. Simon is enthusiastic about the world-class facilities and outstanding User support culture that define SSRL and strongly believes in supporting SSRL's long-term future.

Cathy Knotts, >SSRL User Research Administration Manager, Menlo Park, CA
Cathy has managed SSRL User Research Administration since November 2000, taking on the additional responsibilities for establishing and managing a joint SSRL/LCLS User Office from 2007-2015 (LCLS began operations with the first user assisted commissioning experiments in 2009). Before joining SLAC, Cathy managed administrative operations and corporate communications in the biotechnology industry (1994-2000). Prior to moving to California to help start a biotech company, she was a management analyst for the National Institute on Aging/National Institutes of Health in Maryland. Cathy graduated from the University of Maryland majoring in Health Science and Policy.

Ailiena Maggiolo, California Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
Ailiena Maggiolo is a graduate student in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. She has been a user on the Macromolecular Crystallography and XAS beamlines at SSRL since her first visit as an undergraduate in 2015. She has also been a user at APS, CHESS, and ALS. She is currently studying nitrogenase proteins in the lab of Prof. Douglas Rees, where she aims to combine XAS and MMX to understand complex metal clusters and their dynamics. As a member of the bioinorganic community, she has been particularly thankful for the diversity of methods that SSRL has made possible. Her research has depended on the tremendous achievements and collaborative nature of the beamline scientists and staff.

Blaine Mooers, University of Oklahoma Health Science Center, Oklahoma City, OK
Blaine Mooers is an Associate Professor at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (OUHSC). In addition to faculty, he serves as the director of the Laboratory of Biomolecular Structure and Function, which is also a core facility for the Oklahoma COBRE in Structural Biology. Blaine began macromolecular crystallography as a graduate student by working on problems in DNA structure with Dr. Shing Ho at Oregon State University. He worked on problems in protein structure as a post-doc with Dr. Brian Matthews at the University of Oregon. While a post-doc, he used synchrotron radiation to collect atomic resolution data from crystals of proteins, thanks to expert guidance in data collection from SSRL staff. He determined the structures of several proteins and RNAs by direct methods with data collected at SSRL. Blaine has been a proposal spokesperson continuously since 2000, first in on OUHSC structural studies of RNAs and proteins from the unique RNA editing system in the mitochondrion of trypanosomes. He also collaborates with several OUHSC labs on structural studies of proteins related to influenza and cancer biology. He has been involved in SAXS studies since 2011 and is an active user of BL 4-2. Blaine believes that crystallography will continue to play a vital role in integrative structural biology. He served as chair of the SSRL User Executive Committee (UEC) during the existential budget crisis of 2017. He seeks re-election to the UEC to represent the concerns and needs of the users of macromolecular crystallography. http://structuralbiology.ou.edu/

Liane Moreau, Washington State University, Pullman, WA
Liane Moreau has been an SSRL user on XAS and RXES beamlines since 2017. She is currently a faculty member in the department of chemistry at Washington State University, where she leads a research group towards exploring nanoscale properties of f-element materials and the structure of their surfaces and interfaces through pairing new synthetic developments with in-depth X-ray characterization. Liane completed her PhD in Materials Science and Engineering under the direction of Michael Bedzyk and Chad Mirkin at Northwestern University. Subsequently, she worked as a postdoctoral fellow under Corwin Booth at Lawrence Berkeley Lab in the heavy element chemistry group. Historically, Liane's work has relied upon synchrotron XAS and SAXS studies, specifically aiming to map the growth and transformation processes involved in the synthesis of nanoparticles, spanning the periodic table from first row transition metals to actinides. She has experience developing containment strategies for safely measuring radioactive samples and analysis strategies for systems with complex backgrounds. Liane had her first taste of synchrotron XAS work in 2009 as an undergraduate at Cornell University studying nanoscale oxidation processes and hasn't stopped since. She has experience working at CHESS, APS and ALS in addition to SSRL and looks forward to contributing to the continued growth and development of the synchrotron community for years to come.

Rebecca Page, University of Connecticut, Farmington CT
Rebecca Page was the Donna B. Cosulich Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Arizona. She also currently serves the CBC Associate Department Head for Research and Faculty Affairs, interim. Rebecca began macromolecular crystallography as a graduate student studying conformational change in actin with Dr. C.E. Schutt at Princeton University. She then studied neuronal metabolic proteins as a post-doc with Dr. Ray Stevens. During her last year at Scripps, she also served as the crystallomics core director for the Joint Center for Structural Genomics (JCSG) yeast proteome project with Drs. Ray Stevens and Ian Wilson. During this time, she worked very closely with the JCSG group at SSRL for the development and optimization of crystal screening and data collection at SSRL. In 2004, she joined the faculty at Brown University, being an active user of multiple X-ray crystallography and SAXS beamlines during her tenure there (2004-2016). In some years, she served as an instructor for RapiData at NSLS. Her commitment to synchrotron facilities includes serving on multiple proposal panels (from 2014-2016, she served as a proposal reviewer for ALS and in 2016-2018, she served as served on the proposal review panel for the macromolecular crystallography and SAXS beamlines at NSLS-II) and also as an external reviewer. Throughout her career, she has collected data at NSLS, NSLS-II, APS, ALS, Diamond and SSRL for projects focused on signaling and its role in disease. As a long-time user of the SSRL beamlines, she is deeply interested in the long-term success of both the SSRL facility and especially its users. Thus, she is seeking election to the UEC to represent the needs of the users of macromolecular crystallography at SSRL.

Andrew Riscoe, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Andrew Riscoe is a PhD candidate in Matteo Cargnello's group in the Chemical Engineering Department at Stanford University. His research interests include XAS characterization of microporous polymer encapsulated metal catalysts for several small molecule transformations, including selective oxidation of methane to methanol.

Angelia Seyfferth, University of Delaware, Newark, DE
Angelia Seyfferth is Associate Professor of Biogeochemistry and Plant-Soil Interactions at the University of Delaware where she works to understand the soil biogeochemical processes that dictate contaminant and nutrient cycling and uptake by plants. Her group is particularly interested in how small-scale soil-chemical processes influence contaminant (e.g., As, Cd, Pb) and nutrient (e.g., Si, P, Fe, S) release or attenuation that have large-scale impacts on human and environmental health. They use advanced analytical techniques such as synchrotron X-ray absorption spectroscopy and imaging to unravel the species distributions of contaminants and nutrients in the rhizosphere and in plant tissues, and mechanisms of uptake by plant roots. Ultimately, they conduct basic research that can be applied to benefit society on a local-to-global scale. https://canr.udel.edu/faculty/seyfferth-angelia/

Edward Snell, Hauptman Woodward Institute, Buffalo, NY
Edward Snell is President and CEO of the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute, Buffalo New York, an independent not-for profit research institute. He is also a professor in the Department of Materials Design and Innovation at SUNY Buffalo and adjunct faculty at the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. His research is supported by the NSF, NIH, and NASA and focuses on dynamic systems with an interest in metalloproteins. He has been an active and continuous user of SSRL since 1996 and a user at ESRF and SRS before that. His background is in crystallography with a gradual shift to complementary techniques including Small Angle X-ray Scattering using SSRL BL 4-2. His BioSAXS work, in close collaboration with SSRL staff, has led to an IUCr Monograph on Biological Solution Scattering published by Oxford University Press. He is also the PI of NSF funded BioXFEL Science and Technology Center which explores ultrafast dynamics and in it's current renewal focuses on the complete biological dynamics of systems. Edward (Eddie) knows SSRL and has been a strong advocate for many years. He wants to see SSRL do well in the future and and to continue to support it's users most effectively.

Timothy Stemmler, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI
Tim Stemmler is a Full Professor and Associate Chair for the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Wayne State University (WSU). In addition, Tim is an Associate Dean of the WSU Graduate School where he serves as the Director of the Postdoctoral Scholar Office. Tim been using XAS in his research since 1990, while receiving his training under Jim Penner-Hahn at the University of Michigan. After serving as an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the University of Utah, Tim started his career as a new faculty member at WSU in 2000. He has been continuously funded by the NIH and American Heart Association since 2001, and has published over 85 journal articles/reviews/book chapters predominately using XAS in his research. He has presented his work at over 77 conferences/Universities, both nationally and internationally in the past 17 years. He has had 10 PhD students, 5 MS students, and mentored 7 postdoctoral scholars, who have used XAS in their research. He has served on 27 NIH study sections since 2008, and is an active reviewer for the NSF and several International funding agencies. Tim did a sabbatical at SSRL in 2013 with Dr. Keith Hodgson and Dr. Britt Hedman and remains an active user and supporter of SSRL.

Kelly Lynn Summers, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Kelly Summers is a PhD candidate in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Saskatchewan. She holds an MSc and a BSc (Honors) in Biology from the University of Western Ontario and currently holds an Alexander Graham Bell Canadian Graduate Scholarship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to support her PhD research. She is a fellow in the Training in Health Research Using Synchrotron Techniques (THRUST) program and is part of the Molecular and Environmental Sciences Group at the University of Saskatchewan, led by Canada Research Chairs, Profs. Graham George and Ingrid Pickering. Kelly has been involved in the university community through participation in departmental committees, including the Chemistry Course Council. She has also engaged in several conference organization activities including the semi-annual Graduate Student Symposium and the annual THRUST Retreat. Throughout her graduate research Kelly has had the opportunity to operate numerous beamlines at several synchrotron facilities, including the Advanced Photon Source, the Australian Synchrotron, and the Canadian Light Source, in addition to frequent runs at SSRL. Kelly received an NSERC Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement to support her travel to the Australian Synchrotron and her studies there. She has experience in both x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and x-ray fluorescence Imaging techniques and uses both in her research, as well as for collaborative projects. In fact, SSRL’s biological XAS Beam Line 7-3 has been key to her research on the role of metals, particularly copper(II), in the Alzheimer’s brain and how these metals may be manipulated using metal-binding drugs.

Linda Vogt, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Linda Vogt is a graduate student in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Saskatchewan. She has been a synchrotron user since 2012, and has operated various beamlines at the CLS, APS, and SSRL. She worked at the CLS as a casual floor coordinator from 2015 - 2019 and as part of the CLS outreach team from 2017 - 2020.

Beth Wurzburg, LBNL, Joint Genome Institute, Berkeley, CA
Beth was a Research Associate at the LBNL Joint Genome Institute. Previously, Beth was a Research Associate in the laboratory of Prof. Ted Jardetzky. She trained as a protein biochemist (Don Wiley's laboratory) and as a crystallographer (Ted Jardetzky's laboratory), and she has been collecting data at synchrotrons since 1995. Her research interests include biophysical studies of proteins of the immune system and of human pathogens.

Limei Zhang, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE
Dr. Limei Zhang, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has been an SSRL user on XAS and Macromolecular Crystallography beamlines since 2004. Limei received her PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Saskatchewan working with Prof. Graham N George (2004-2009), followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology with Prof. Douglas C. Rees (2009-2014). She is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and the Redox Biology Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The Zhang group's research focuses on the structural and mechanistic investigation of metalloproteins in redox reactions and stress response, using a combination of synchrotron light-based techniques (X-ray crystallography, XAFS and X-ray fluorescence imaging) and biochemical approaches. Limei has co-authored 26 peer-reviewed publications, among which over 20 publications contain the research conducted at SSRL. She has recently received an NSF CAREER Award and NIH MIRA Award. Limei is enthusiastic about advancing techniques at SSRL and LCLS by combining the strengths of X-ray crystallography and XAS. She is looking forward to contributing to the synchrotron community at SSRL.