Changing model of CHESS operation: The Changing Landscape of X-ray Facilities

For the last four decades, supported by federal agencies, synchrotron x-ray facilities have provided the user community free access to world-leading structural and spectroscopic x-ray characterization capabilities. These user facilities have enabled academic and industrial users to access routinely facilities and expertise at the national laboratories and created large communities of researchers who are now dependent on them. The combination of the need to upgrade existing facilities and to build entirely new capabilities, while still serving the existing users, has increased costs at a rate well beyond the growth in the agency budgets. At the same time, the emphasis on publications in high impact science journals and in the cost per paper has disadvantaged research in engineering topics and industrial researchers. In the future, additional partners will need to step up and provide financial support for synchrotron x-ray facilities. And, the synchrotron facilities will need to reconfigure to support a more diverse community of users. In this talk, I will explore how CHESS is adapting to meet these twin challenges.