Please register to attend: https://www.research.colostate.edu/arc/seminars-workshops/
As part of our seminar series highlighting the new Anton Paar XRDynamic 500, we’re excited to invite you to our next session focused on Pair Distribution Function (PDF) analysis.
This seminar will be presented by visiting UCSB Prof. Simon Billinge, a leading expert in the field who has played a key role in advancing and adapting this technique on the new Anton Paar XRD.
Seminar Abstract:
Nanoparticles, nanoporous materials and nanostructured bulk materials are at the heart of next generation technological solutions in sustainable energy, effective new pharmac euticals and environmental remediation. A key to making progress is to be able to understand the nanoparticle structure, the arrangements of atoms in the nanoparticles and nanoscale structures. Also critical is understanding the distribution of the nanoparticles and how they change in time as devices run and reactions take place. We use advanced x-ray, neutron and electron scattering methods to get at this problem. I will talk about these methods and show some recent success-stories in the fields of sustainable energy, environmental remediation and cultural heritage preservation. However, I will also discuss the fundamental limitations on our ability to extract information from the data and how we are now turning to machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques to give more insights.
Speaker Bio:
Prof. Billinge has more than 25 years of experience developing and applying techniques to study local structure in materials using x-ray, neutron and electron diffraction including the development of novel data analysis methods including graph theoretic, artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches. He earned his Ph.D in Materials Science and Engineering from University of Pennsylvania in 1992. After 13 years as a faculty member at Michigan State University, and 18 years at Columbia University he took up his current position as Professor of Materials Science and Director of the California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI) at UC Santa Barbara. He also held a joint position of Physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory between 2008 and 2022.
Prof. Billinge has published more than 350 papers in scholarly journals. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Neutron Scattering Society of America, a former Fulbright and Sloan fellow and has earned a number of awards including, in 2025, the Gregori Aminoff prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of sciences, and the Innovation in Materials Characterization Award of the Materials Research Society. He was honored in 2011 for contributions to the nation as an immigrant by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. He is Section Editor of Acta Crystallographica Section A: Advances and Foundations. He regularly chairs and participates in reviews of major facilities and federally funded programs.
