Thank you to Jon Goff, RHUL and David Voneshen, STFC for delivering the GRADnet Advanced Materials workshop on 24 April 2024 at Royal Holloway, University of London.  

Phoebe Meadows, Postgraduate Researcher at RHUL attended the workshop and shared her thoughts on the day:

“The day was run by Dr David Voneshen and Professor Jon Goff and provided an overview of subjects integral to the study of materials.

The day consisted of lectures and tutorials covering topics of structures, excitations, and large-scale facilities. This was a very useful exercise that allowed us to first learn the key principles of the subjects, and then apply that knowledge by going through tutorial questions and worked answers together.

We also got the chance to observe practical experiments using the x-ray diffractometer here at Royal Holloway. Short practicals were run so we could see in action the range of capabilities x-rays have when investigating powder or thin film samples. Following this, a brief overview of how you would typically analyse the collected data was demonstrated.

To conclude the workshop, we had the opportunity to use the information we had learnt throughout the day to present a short experiment proposal to the rest of the cohort. This was a chance to learn more about each other’s research interests and use our strengths to produce a compelling proposal to get beamtime for our thought up experiment.

Overall, the day was very beneficial and an occasion to bring together students from different universities and academic backgrounds, but with a shared interest in the study of materials.

Phoebe standing by an X-ray diffractometer, or XRD machine  at RHUL.  This is a device for analyzing and measuring the structure of materials.