More than 30 early-career researchers from across Australia and New Zealand attended the first joint Australian Synchrotron-ANSTO powder diffraction workshop at the synchrotron in September 2011.

Entitled ‘Powder Diffraction at Australia’s Synchrotron and OPAL Facilities: Experiment Planning to Data Analysis’ the workshop consisted of an intensive four-day program of lectures and hands-on tutorials given by a range of speakers. Presenters included AS powder diffraction beamline staff, James Hester and Michael James from ANSTO, Ian Madsen from CSIRO and Craig Brown from NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) in Washington state USA.

During the workshop, students learnt about all aspects of powder diffraction research and data analysis: from experiment proposals and planning through to data analysis. Students were provided with a suite of freeware packages to assist their data analysis, as well as comprehensive tutorials and hands-on sessions to help them develop their data analysis skills.

The powder diffraction team gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the AS, Bragg Institute at OPAL, and AINSE. The International Centre for Diffraction Data (ICDD) gave students a live video-link demonstration of their inorganic diffraction database and provided a 30-day trial license to all participants.

The workshop was well-received by participants, with comments such as: “you and your team were very helpful throughout the week. I have some ideas now on refinement and hopefully I can apply my acquired knowledge well when it comes to having to deal with powder diffraction data” and “thank you for organising such a great workshop. The basics of data processing are often overlooked in workshops as they assume the basics are known. However, from experience I know that if the basics are not well understood then the advanced is confusing”.