Zhiming Liu, a second year graduate student in Dr. Ben Xue’s Research Group, attended the 19th National School on X-Ray and Neutron Scattering from August 5th to 19th held at Argonne National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The School aims to “educate graduate students on the utilization of major neutron and x-ray facilities.” The two-week program included lectures, presented by researchers from academia, industry, and national laboratories, and provided basic tutorials on the principles of scattering theory and the characteristics of the sources, as well as seminars on the application of scattering methods to a variety of scientific subjects.
“It was a very precious opportunity to learn first-hand experiments from the top scientists in each field.” Liu said. “Form the experiments, we had chance to work on 3 different instruments at both Argonne and ORNL. We spent every afternoon with different beamline scientists. They were very nice and patient. They answered our questions in depth and extended our knowledge further from different point of views.” Liu continued. “These really help me to know what kind science these state-of-art techniques can probe and how these can fit to my own research.”
Liu was born and grew up in Weihai, Shandong Province, northeast coast of China. He obtained his B.S. in Applied Chemistry from Jiangnan University in 2016, and came to UT the same year to start to work towards a Ph.D. degree in chemistry. He is currently working on probing molecular magnetism by neutron scattering.
“I want to thank ORNL and Argonne National Lab for offering this great opportunity to boost my knowledge and field of vision.” Liu expressed his gratitude towards mentors who have helped him along the way. “Thank you Dr. Ziling Xue and Shelby Stavretis for the help with my application. And the thank you Dr. Sheng Dai and Dr. Zhiguo Gu for the recommendation.”