Our Team

For the past 15 years, beamline scientists in crystallography and small-angle scattering at the ALS have independently facilitated access to their beamlines to serve the large structural biology user base at the ALS. Now, a recently awarded National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant will be used to integrate these independent existing structural biology resources. The funds are being used to establish a centralized collaborative mechanism, called ALS-ENABLE (“ALS Efficiently Networking Advanced BeamLine Experiments”), that will leverage the capabilities and expertise across the beamlines to optimize the chances of successful structure determination for both routine and challenging problems. User proposals that are awarded beam time will be discussed together by this team of expert scientists to look for ways to enhance the experimental outcome—for instance, by using a different beamline or combination of techniques. The team will also streamline training and outreach. The overriding goal is to allow the user to focus on the scientific problem of interest rather than the individual technique.