Before taking up her appointment at the Australian Synchrotron, Dr Cathy Harland was the ASRP (Australian Synchrotron Research Program) beamline scientist at XOR at the Advanced Photon Source in Chicago. Cathy's previous positions include a postdoctoral appointment at Brookhaven National Laboratory. She also worked for the American Physical Society as a senior editorial assistant for Physical Review B. Cathy began her career at Wollongong University with a BEng (I) and then worked for BHP Research before completing a PhD at the University of Sheffield, UK, on rare earth/iron/boron (REFeB) based hard magnetic alloys.