CMU professor awarded highly competitive access to beamtime for research

Dr. Anthony Chappaz has been awarded close to one million dollars in beamtime from the national government.

Central Michigan University is touting a research coup. Dr. Anthony Chappaz is a world-renowned researcher. He’s been awarded close to one million dollars in beamtime at synchrotron facilities from the national government.

Researchers will use these particle beams to accelerate electrons and investigate chemistry. The beams that Dr. Chappaz was awarded time at are located at four synchrotron facilities in the United States and Europe. Dr. Chappaz said there are only about 70 synchrotron facilities in the world, and that time access is highly exclusive. In order to get access to beamtime at the synchrotron facticiltes in the United States, researchers apply through National Institute of Standards and Technology. It costs roughly 40 thousand dollars for 24 hours of beamtime. Dr. Chappaz and his team of students were given one million dollars in time, which is over 25 days of research.

The time will help Dr. Chappaz, and the PhD students in his program to analyze properties of critical elements such as mercury.

Marcelo, a visiting PhD student from Brazil, is studying the effects of mercury from illegal mining in the Amazon Rainforest. When Marcelo came to CMU six months ago, he came with over 500 soil samples from the Amazon.