B. Hedman

As part of the preparation for the Response to Questions from the DOE BESAC Sub-committee on Synchrotron Science, a fair amount of time was spent in summarizing and internally formulating a picture of educational activities at SSRL. The extent of these activities came almost as a surprise to the laboratory, and we thought it might be of interest to share this information with a wider audience.

SSRL and Stanford University. From the very beginning, SSRL has had a very strong intellectual tie to Stanford University. Formally this has been (and still is) by way of faculty appointments joint with campus Departments (e.g., Applied Physics, Materials Science, Electrical Engineering, Chemistry). SSRL furthermore has its own academic faculty (the SSRL component of the SLAC faculty); the faculty chair is currently Sebastian Doniach. The SSRL faculty is augmented by term appointments from other Stanford University Departments. There is also a group of Affiliated Faculty, which consists of Stanford University faculty that have an intellectual interest in the science at SSRL and active research programs at the facility, and which serve in an advisory function to the SSRL Directorate. SSRL also has a group of Consulting Faculty from other academic institutions, industry and Government laboratories, whose role is to provide advice and expertise in diverse scientific fields.

Graduate Student Education. Because of these ties to Stanford University, graduate student education has always been an integral part of the SSRL program. As with SLAC, SSRL does not have its own graduate student program - all SSRL graduate students are formally graduate students within a campus Department (Physics, Applied Physics, Materials Science, Chemistry, etc.).

In addition to Stanford students, a very large number of graduate students from other institutions have based their theses on work done at SSRL, either having spent a long time at the laboratory as visitors, or as users. As new fields have been pioneered, graduate students have been, and continue to be, at the forefront in these developments, and have moved into important positions at other synchrotron and Government laboratories, in academia and in industry after completion of their theses.

As of June 1, 1997 a total of 349 Ph.D. and 11 M.Sc. theses had been reported to SSRL as being awarded based on work partially of fully performed at SSRL. The first thesis was completed in 1974, by C.A. Ashley, on "Extended X-ray Absorption Fine Structure" (S. Doniach, advisor), with P.E. Gregory, "Ultraviolet Photoemission Studies of the Surface States and Properties of the (110) Gallium Arsenide Surface and of the Oxidation of Cesium" (W.E. Spicer, advisor) and B.M. Kincaid " Synchrotron Radiation Studies of K-Edge X-ray Photo-absorption Spectra: Theory and Experiment" (S. Doniach, advisor) as runner-ups in 1975. There were in all 31 theses before 1980, many representing breakthroughs in several scientific fields. During 1980-1989, 154 theses were reported with a peak in 1986 of 23 theses. In the 1990s, 177 theses have been completed so far, and there are currently 19 reported to SSRL for the year 1997.

Graduate Student Program in Accelerator Physics. Recognizing a U.S. need for accelerator physicists, SSRL and the Stanford Applied Physics Department initiated an educational and training program for graduate students about ten years ago. SSRL faculty, now joined by SLAC high-energy physics faculty, offer a range of graduate courses in accelerator physics. Two interleaved biannual courses on "Introduction into Accelerator Physics" and "Electromagnetic Radiation from Relativistic Electrons" form the basis of this program and are supplemented by one or two specialized courses per academic year. Applied Physics and SSRL were the hosts for the 1992 US Particle Accelerator School, which offers a variety of full credit courses in accelerator Physics. This school will be repeated at Stanford in 1998.

A special training program has also been established by SSRL at the SUNSHINE (Stanford UNiversity SHort INtense Electron source) facility, and is headed by Helmut Wiedemann. This facility consists of an rf gun, a bunch compressor, a 30 MeV linac, a 4 m undulator and optical instrumentation. The purpose of this facility is exclusively for the training of graduate students while conducting forefront electron and photon beam research. This facility has been developed by the students to generate 100 f-sec rms electron bunches; develop an optical device to measure f-sec pulses; and produce coherent, polarized, far infrared radiation with radiance exceeding that of black body radiation by 5 to 8 orders of magnitude in the form of i) transition radiation (broad band, sub p-sec pulses), ii) stimulated transition radiation (broad band, sub p-sec pulses) (first observed at SUNSHINE), and iii) single pass FEL (narrow band, high radiance). Three of the six former graduate students are now working as accelerator physicists at APS, NSLS and SLAC. There are currently six students in training.

Two additional Stanford graduate students, supervised by SLAC faculty/staff, are currently performing longitudinal feedback and nonlinear map fitting studies using SPEAR. SSRL is also hosting accelerator physics graduate students from other universities (MAXlab/Lund University, Sweden and UCLA). Finally, there is a graduate student from University of Rochester working on the LCLS gun test facility.

Undergraduate Education. SLAC as a laboratory organizes a program called Summer Internships in Science & Engineering (SISE). SISE is a lecture and research participation program for undergraduate students who are traditionally underrepresented in science, such as women, and some minority groups, often from historically black colleges and universities. SISE is designed to encourage these students to pursue careers in science. From a national applicant pool, approximately 20 students are selected to spend 8 weeks at SLAC during the summer under the supervision of laboratory scientists. This program has existed for 26 years, and to date ca. 50 students have worked at SSRL. SSRL furthermore engages undergraduate students directly in work with its staff typically during the summer months, funded directly through the SSRL budget. Recent projects have spanned a wide range of topics, with just a few examples being: computer code development for VME modules in the ring feedback system, for 'corrector ironing' program on SPEAR, and for soft X-ray spectroscopy data acquisition; FEL computer simulations for the LCLS; and protein crystallization of the channel protein annexin. This activity has in several cases resulted in co-authorship on internal reports and scientific publications.

Undergraduate students are also to some extent direct participants as users in research at SSRL. This is a small activity, but one that is currently growing. Three representative examples of undergraduates working with/as SSRL users are:

Two seniors at University of California at Santa Cruz based their theses on X-ray absorption spectroscopy work with Prof. F. Bridges. Both students received the Dean and Chancellor Awards for Senior Thesis in their year: Eric Bauer, "Local structure study of two high temperature superconductors HgBa₂CuO_4+d and YBa₂(Cu_1-xCo_x)O _7-d), March 1996; and Zev Kvitky, "Using EXAFS spectroscopy to probe interatomic potentials in Ag, Au, Pb, and RbBr", January 1997.

As part of projects led by Dr. S.D. Conradson, LANL, Nicole Levy, California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, worked at SSRL during the summers 1995, 1996. The work included study of local structure in actinide-containing materials and compounds, and chemical speciation in solutions and inhomogeneous solids. This activity is continuing with students Leilani Pastizzo, San Jose State University, and Dorota Rek, California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, both summer 1996 - present.

Several students from the San Jose State University, California, are working at SSRL with Prof. Juana Acrivos on projects related to high T_c superconductor materials, using X-ray absorption spectroscopy as a method. The opportunity to do synchrotron research with Dr. Acrivos is through NSF support at SJSU. Among former students are K. Hathaway (CEO in Palo Alto), J. Reynolds (University of Florida, Gainsville), C. Bustillo (engineer at Apple), D. Gilbert (Michigan State University). Current students are C.M. Burch, M. Rose, L. Nguyen and T. Norman.

High School and College Teacher Education. SLAC also offers a two week program on particle physics for high school and college teachers (~30 participants/year) during the summers. The program consists of presentations and demonstrations from scientists and development of related classroom activities. Two days are spent at SSRL to gain insight into the use of synchrotron radiation. There is also a Teacher Research Associates program, where teachers participate in laboratory research for 6-8 weeks during the summer. During the 1997 summer one teacher intern, David Trapp, worked at SSRL.

Workshops and Conferences. Since 1987, SSRL has organized 17 workshops with subjects ranging from synchrotron sources and specialized beam lines to applications in trace impurity analysis for silicon processing, biological small angle scattering, X-ray absorption spectroscopy and protein crystallography data analysis. During the same period SSRL has hosted three international scientific meetings in addition to national gatherings. In particular the workshops have had a large impact on graduate students (and faculty members new to synchrotron radiation research) in providing them a good introduction to various fields of synchrotron radiation research. This is especially so with those that were arranged to provide hands-on experimental training. Many non-student participants have also been introduced to, for them, novel techniques this way and later returned to SSRL as users.