ARGONNE EXTENDS SITE RESTRICTIONS April 10, 2020
CURRENT APS OPERATIONS AND SCHEDULE To cooperate with the extension of the stay-at-home order issued March 31, 2020, by the Governor of Illinois, Argonne is extending the site restrictions enacted with the Governor’s original order through April 30, 2020. The Lab has ceased all on-site functions except those deemed government critical and will continue to maximize telecommuting. Only mail-in or remote access modes of data collection for a limited class of experiments are permitted at this time and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
The APS will remain operational to support:
- critical COVID-19 related research such as those related to general immunity, off-label antivirals, and/or co-infection diseases; and
- critical, proprietary pharmaceutical research.
Additionally, collection of data from samples already on-site at the APS will be permitted, provided no additional on-site staff is required. Restarting all remote-access and mail-in research would entail additional on-site staff, which APS management believes is not prudent at this time.
To continue to meet the needs for ongoing COVID-19 research, APS management has extended the current 2020-1 run by two weeks – to May 12. The revised long-range schedule can be found here. Updates to operational modes and schedule will be posted as they become available.
COVID-19 PORTAL In light of the rapidly changing situation world-wide resulting from the coronavirus, the Department of Energy (DOE) Basic Energy Sciences light sources want to ensure they are doing everything possible to enable research into this virus and the search for an effective vaccine or other treatment. The DOE supports research into structural biology in partnership with the National Institutes of Health, and universities. A new webpage, The Structural Biology Portal, collects relevant x-ray, neutron, and cryoEM resources for structural biology in a single location, listing their basic characteristics and a point of contact for each.
EXPEDITED, RAPID ACCESS CALL FOR COVID-19 RESEARCH The APS is providing expedited remote access for research related to COVID-19 at this time. The Structural Biology Portal lists available APS beamlines for macromolecular crystallography and BioSAXS. Step-by-step instructions on how to apply for expedited beam time are listed on the New User Checklist. All users must be registered and their home institution must have an active User Agreement.
Please submit a Rapid Access Proposal and state that the research is related to the SARS CoV-2 virus or COVID-19.
- To request an MX beamline, submit a Macromolecular Crystallography Proposal (choose “rapid access 2020-1: for immediate work). Here is a list of MX beamlines.
- To request a non-MX beamline, choose Rapid Access General User Proposal and select the 2020-1 cycle for immediate work.
For administrative assistance, please contact the APS User Office at apsuser@aps.anl.gov. For technical assistance, please contact Bob Fischetti at rfischetti@anl.gov.