The Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) is a Department of Energy (DOE) national user facility for neutron scattering and neutron nuclear science located in northern New Mexico. LANSCE is committed to assisting professors and students interested in materials and engineering research by facilitating access to its facilities and instrumentation.
The STONE (Student Travel Opportunities for Neutron Experiments) program is aimed at broadening the user community, increasing access to instruments to students and faculty, and providing training to new student users in neutron scattering techniques. STONE is the brainchild of the LANSCE HIPPO Spectrometer Development Team (SDT): Principal investigator Dr. Rudy Wenk, University of California-Berkeley and Project Manager Kristin Bennett.
Through the Los Alamos National Laboratory's University of California Directed Research and Development Office (UCDRD), funds have been made available to students coming to LANSCE to conduct neutron scattering experiments. These funds, to be used to help offset travel expenses to Los Alamos, are available to all University of California or New Mexico university students who have been allocated beam time as part of an approved experimental team. In addition to these travel funds, LANSCE staff members provide students with training on the use of the spectrometers and flight paths and assist in experimental set up and data analysis. This high level of technical support allows professors the flexibility to bring, or send, students to conduct experiments without a high impact on their research budget.
Beam time allocations are made through a peer-review proposal process to conduct experiments at two major facilities, the Lujan Neutron Scattering Center (Lujan Center) and the Weapons Neutron Research Facility (WNR).
To probe the structure and dynamics of solids and liquids, the Lujan Center provides researchers and students with state-of-the-art spectrometers for neutron scattering and nuclear physics. Research conducted at the Lujan Center includes advanced composite materials, polymers, new-generation catalysts, magnetic materials, and biomolecular structure. Information on Lujan Center capabilities, instrumentation, and technical contacts can be found at lansce.lanl.gov/lujan.
At the WNR facility, high-energy, unmoderated neutrons and protons are used for basic and applied research in nuclear science such as accelerated testing of semiconductors, measuring neutron-induced charged-particle reactions for level density studies, dosimetry, neutron transport, and high-energy neutron radiography. Further information regarding experimentation at WNR is available at wnr.lanl.gov.
Selection criteria for travel support through the STONE Program are:
- 1. Students must be from a University of California or New Mexico campus.
- 2. Students must be a member of the experimental team on an approved LANSCE experimental proposal for work to be conducted at the Lujan Center or WNR.
- 3. Travel support per experiment shall not exceed $500 for a single trip to LANSCE, or $1000 per run cycle, if multiple trips are required. Support is meant to offset travel costs such as airfare, car rental and lodging. Senior scientists are encouraged to match travel subsidies with contributions from research grants.
- 4. New users (especially undergraduate and graduate students) have first priority.
- 5. Support for dissertation research shall have next highest priority.
- 6. For the first $20K per FY provided by UCDRD, final decisions about providing travel support, utilizing the above criteria, are made by the UC faculty members on the HIPPO Executive Committee. Students using HIPPO will have the highest priority.
- 7. For the remaining funds per FY, decisions will be made utilizing the above criteria by LANSCE through the Experiment Coordinator, Leilani Conradson, at the Lujan Center.
All requests for travel support should be made to the LANSCE User Office after a proposal has been granted beam time by the HIPPO Executive Committee or the LANSCE Program Advisory Committee and has been scheduled. Requests must be received at least one week prior to the scheduled experiment start date. Send requests to Leilani Conradson, leilani@lanl.gov, or call at 505-665-9505.
Requests for funding must include:
- 1. Proposal number and scheduled start date.
- 2. Name of student and institution.
- 3. Name of person requesting support if other than student.
