Yang Ren, a physicist and Advanced Photon Source (APS) beamline scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, is the 2020 recipient of the Gopal K. Shenoy Excellence in Beamline Science Award.

The annual award is given to a beamline scientist at the APS, a DOE Office of Science User Facility. It is presented by the APS Users Organization and is intended to recognize scientists who make significant contributions to research or instrument development and promote that work to the user community.

“It’s a great honor to receive this award,” said Ren, a member of the APS X-ray Science Division (XSD) Structural Science Group. ​“I feel very fortunate to work at the APS, a great place for our user community to conduct research, with constant support from wonderful colleagues around the ring and around the laboratory.”

Ren was nominated for this award by Valeri Petkov, professor at Central Michigan University, for his leadership in the field of high-energy X-ray diffraction for more than 19 years. In his nomination form, Petkov lauded Ren for helping to shepherd this technique ​“to a mainstream capability enabling leading-edge research on atomic structures and generating major impact in many areas of condensed matter physics and material science, including battery materials, catalysts, ferroelectrics and multiferroics, ceramics, metals and alloys, and materials science under extreme conditions.”

“It’s a great honor to receive this award. I feel very fortunate to work at the APS, a great place for our user community to conduct research, with constant support from wonderful colleagues around the ring and around the laboratory.” — Yang Ren, X-ray Sciences Division, Argonne National Laboratory

Petkov noted Ren’s outreach efforts to industry, including companies such as General Motors, Ford, Apple and General Electric, and his work to make high-energy X-ray diffraction an important technique for industrial applications. Petkov also celebrated Ren’s work with his beamline’s user community, calling him the ​“ultimate colleague” and pointing to the 80 publications and more than 5,700 total citations coming out of his beamline 11-ID-C in 2019 alone.

Jonathan Lang, XSD Division Director at the APS, calls Ren a leader in the application of high-energy X-ray scattering techniques to address problems across a wide range of scientific disciplines. Ren, he says, is an advocate for the APS, bringing in many new scientists who have not used X-rays before.

“He truly enjoys working with people to conduct their experiments and assisting with the analysis and interpretation afterwards,” Lang said. ​“His input into these experiments is invaluable, increasing the number and impact of the publications produced at his beamline. He is among the most productive scientists in terms of publications at the APS.”

Ren has been with Argonne since 1999, joining the APS in 2001 as an assistant physicist. Since 2007, he has been a physicist and lead beamline scientist for XSD. He received his Ph.D. in chemical physics from the Materials Science Center, University of Groningen, Netherlands, and has published more than 600 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals, including Nature, Science, and Physical Review Letters.

The award is named for the late Argonne Distinguished Fellow Gopal K. Shenoy, one of the key figures in the creation of the APS.

“I have admired and respected Gopal Shenoy since I first came to work at the APS,” Ren said. ​“To receive an award named after someone you have admired for so long, it’s very exciting to me.”