Conference Registration (deadline extended to June 3, 2024)
Registration covers access to the training workshop on June 10th, all the sessions during the main workshop on June 11-12th, and includes some working meals that will be listed on the final agenda.
Conference Venue
Reserve Your Room Now (now closed)
The ORNL Neutron Sciences Directorate is organizing a workshop, Neutrons in Structural Biology – Challenges & Opportunities, to be held June 10-12, 2024 at the Sheraton Pentagon City Hotel, Arlington, VA. The goal of the workshop is to garner support for the construction of the macromolecular neutron diffraction beamline EWALD at ORNL’s Second Target Station. EWALD will be capable of performing biological neutron crystallography on radically smaller crystals to help meet neutron beamtime demand for challenging biological systems.
The workshop will highlight the biological scientific community’s need for access to a new generation of neutron scattering capabilities to address pressing challenges in biochemistry, structural biology, enzymology and drug design that cannot be solved with the current neutron scattering technology or other structural biology techniques such as X-ray crystallography, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, and cryo-EM.
The workshop will also introduce the Instrument Scientific Advisory Committee for the development of a macromolecular neutron diffractometer at ORNL’s Second Target Station. The beamline will deliver orders of magnitude gains in performance for biological research and expand accessibility to larger biological systems crucial for understanding biochemistry and advancing the design of future therapeutics.
In addition, the Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (DNP)-enabled IMAGINE-X instrument, a capability recently funded by the Department of Energy’s Biopreparedness Research Virtual Environment (BRaVE) Initiative, will be presented at the workshop. IMAGINE-X, under construction at the High Flux Isotope Reactor, will dramatically enhance signal from hydrogen atoms, obviating the need for deuteration, and decreasing the crystal volume required for a successful experiment by one-to-two orders of magnitude. The successful development of the DNP capability and its implementation at the STS beamline will create a "quantum leap" in biological macromolecular neutron crystallography.
The workshop will be a forum for structural biology and biochemistry experts, early career researchers, and students to discuss scientific advances and collaboration opportunities. The workshop will include a 1-day satellite training workshop (June 10, 2024) to educate graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in the application of neutron crystallography and small angle scattering in structural biology.
Organizing Committee
Andrey Kovalevsky, ORNL, kovalevskyay@ornl.gov
Flora Meilleur, ORNL and North Carolina State University, meilleurf@ornl.gov
Dean Myles, ORNL, mylesda@ornl.gov
Hugh O'Neill, ORNL, oneillhm@ornl.gov
Local Contacts
Keosha Anderson, ORNL, andersonkj@ornl.gov
Kristen Summey, ORNL, summeyka@ornl.gov
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