On Friday 18th April 2014, ten students from the University Paris-Sud took over four SOLEIL beamlines, as part of the HELIOS program. Set up for the first time in 2010, HELIOS aims at putting the young (high-school and university students alike) in a process of active research in a field of their own interest. This year, students from different master degrees came to SOLEIL thanks to the initiative of Frédéric Coquelle, head of the educational unit “Introduction to Imaging Methods”. As true users would have done, they went through the online safety training before being added to a specific project via the SOLEIL User Net. Five “Engineering of Biomolecules” Masters students naturally chose the determination of the atomic structure of a protein which was offered on the PROXIMA 1 and 2 beamlines, when students from other Masters imaged biological tissues with ultraviolet microscopy on DISCO or infrared microscopy on SMIS.
Julien, student from Orsay, discusses this learning experience: “The field of crystallography completely matches my area of interest, and benefitting from such a powerful synchrotron radiation is essential today. I hope I have the opportunity to come back one day, with my own crystals to analyze”.
It is not the first time that students come on a beamline to carry out real experiments on synchrotron radiation. In the framework of our partnership with the Région Centre, high-school students from Chartres have been welcomed on the beamlines for several years now. It is however the first time that only one project mobilizes four different beamlines.
It represents an opportunity for the students to experiment “like a true user”, but also to discover the world of synchrotron and research, and get to cope with analysis techniques that were seen in class or sometimes completely unheard of.
Registration is open for the next edition.