Biophysical Society of Canada (BSC)
Société de Biophysique du Canada (SBC)
William THOMLINSON
Canadian Light Source
The Canadian Light Source: Opportunities in Biomedical Research
The Canadian Light Source (CLS) is in the early phase of operations. Located on the campus of the University of Saskatchewan, the CLS is Canada’s national synchrotron radiation facility serving the Canadian academic, industrial and government scientific communities. The facility is a 3rd generation high brightness source operating at 2.9 GeV. Commissioning of the facility started in the autumn of 2003. Seven experimental beamlines are in the commissioning or construction phase, with full operation of the scientific programs commencing by the end of 2004. These beamlines include: two infrared beamlines for spectroscopy and microscopy, three soft x-ray beamlines for spectroscopy and microscopy, and two hard x-ray lines for protein crystallography and micro-EXAFS. This talk is an overview of the CLS facility, the present status of the storage ring performance and a summary of the Phase I beamlines. In addition, the Canada Foundation for Innovation has recently agreed to fund additional experimental facilities and these will be presented as well, with emphasis on those of direct interest to biomedical research. Several examples of synchrotron radiation biomedical research will be given to highlight the types of programs to be carried out at the CLS in medical imaging and radiation therapy.