Diamond Concise Annual Review 2021/22

36 37 D I A M O N D L I G H T S O U R C E A N N U A L R E V I E W 2 0 2 1 / 2 2 D I A M O N D L I G H T S O U R C E A N N U A L R E V I E W 2 0 2 1 / 2 2 Education, Training and Engagement O ver the past year the COVID pandemic meant we needed to focus on developing and delivering remote engagement activities. We have had nearly 7,000 significant interactions with ‘virtual’ visitors, which included those for scientific and technical events, undergraduate and postgraduate interactions, school students andmembers of the public, and VIPs and stakeholders. We have also been able to start welcoming some visitors back on-site and engage at offsite events. The Diamond Tour is always the highlight of the weekwhenwe have residential training. A coordinator froma PhD student visit Public and schools We adapted to the changing needs of audiences during the pandemic and are developing new videos, workshops and ‘zines’ to engage with school students. We also had limited on-site activities including work experience and group visits as the year progressed. In October we were presented with a Bronze Engage Watermark award from the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) which recognises the commitment of Diamond to Public Engagement. There is an exemplary public engagement team, who had really led effective engagement. Feedback from the NCCPE on the award of a Bronze Watermark Award Diamond has continued its commitment to widening participation and delivering outreach activities in areas of lower science engagement including distributing our Board Game to hundreds of schools to inspire and inform about careers in science research. Higher Education Our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes play a vital role in Diamond’s wider mission to be a world-leading centre for synchrotron science and to keep the UK at the forefront of scientific research. The programmes provide exciting opportunities to nurture a career in STEM and contribute to the wider skills agenda in the UK. Our 2020 Year in Industry cohort was successfully completed, and we welcomed 12 new students in 2021. The 15 Summer Placement students worked in a hybrid fashion on-site and fromhome, covering life and physical sciences, engineering, and software computing. My experience at Diamond has trainedme professionally and personally, trainingwhich I don’t think I would have received elsewhere. I’ll fondly remember the experience for many years to come. Harry Rostron, 2021 Summer Placement Student The 2021 PhD Cohort co-funded by Diamond and 15 universities and world leading facilities brings the total number of active Diamond PhD Studentships to 109 and we will be welcoming 21 new students in October 2022. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, we were also able to host several visits from undergraduate and postgraduate groups. Scientific workshops and conferences It has been a busy year of online workshops and webinars with several new events introduced to the virtual events calendar such as the B24 Correlative Cryo-Imaging workshop and the DIAD User workshop. The Early Career Scientist Symposiumworked particularly well online seeing a record number of over 270 delegates. Several User Working Group meetings engaged our user community in preparation for the new beamlines for Diamond-II. August 2022 will see Diamond hosting IXS2022, our first international conference since the pandemic and we are excited to welcome the Inelastic X-ray Scattering community to Oxford to share new scientific discoveries and the latest developments. Amy Griffin presenting a thermal camera to children at the IF Oxford Science festival. Our 2021 Year in Industry students (right to left: Parnavi, Ishika, Zaeem and Alex) in discussion during our Peer Review Training session.