TY - CONF A1 - Pauw, Brian Richard T1 - Laboratory x-ray scattering instruments as agile test-beds towards holistic experimentation N2 - Laboratory sources offer a unique advantage compared to synchrotron sources, largely in terms of freedom of operation. This freedom from user obligations, technology and software stacks and legacy decisions make the laboratory a very flexible place to develop and explore new ideas. The unparalleled availability furthermore allows for iterative improvement of instrumentation, sample environments and measurement methodologies to maximise the quality of the data obtained. This talk will highlight the use of the laboratory as an agile test-bed and development space, by giving examples of some complete and incomplete investigations undertaken in our laboratory over the last years. Furthermore, it will introduce the concept of holistic experimentation, where the laboratory provides broad-ranging support for materials science investigations. This means that we assist in the experimental preparation, perform the measurements, correction and analysis, and follow-up with assistance in interpretation of our analyses in light of the results from other techniques applied to the investigation. T2 - Invited talk at Diamond Light Source CY - Didcot, UK DA - 22.05.2024 KW - X-ray scattering KW - Methodology development KW - Laboratory management KW - Holistic experimentation KW - Laboratory automation KW - Nanostructural analysis PY - 2024 AN - OPUS4-60582 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Pauw, Brian Richard T1 - Getting down to business: pragmatic solutions for laboratory automation N2 - A chemical engineer by training, Brian drifted towards physics and now focuses on a broad spectrum of activities with the aim to improve scientific reproducibility. This includes studies on holistically improving data quality, data collection efficiency and traceability, as well as concomitant laboratory automation for the preparation of consistent, well-documented sample series. The need for pragmatism led to an inexpensive, flexible laboratory automation platform that can be implemented in a modest amount of time. This talk presents that effort. T2 - Future Labs Live 2024 CY - Basel, Switzerland DA - 25.06.2024 KW - Laboratory automation KW - Experiment tracking KW - Holistic experimentation KW - Experimental traceability KW - Data visualisation KW - Parameter correlation. PY - 2024 AN - OPUS4-60583 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Pauw, Brian Richard T1 - Digital Everything: X-ray Scattering and Synthesis Laboratories N2 - In our (dramatically understaffed) X-ray scattering laboratory, developing a systematic, holistic methodology let us provide scattering and diffraction information for more than 2100 samples for 200+ projects led by 120+ collaborators. Combined with automated data correction pipelines, and our analysis and simulation software, this led to more than 40 papers in the last 5 years with just over 2 full-time staff members. This year, our new, modular synthesis platform has made more than 1000 additional samples for us to analyse and catalogue. By virtue of the automation, the synthesis of these samples is automatically documented in excruciating detail, preparing them for upload and exploitation in large-scale materials databases. This talk is intended to spark ideas and invite collaborations by providing an overview of: 1) the current improvements in our wide-range X-ray scattering laboratory methodology, and 2) introducing our open, modular robotic platform for systematic sample preparation. T2 - Seminar at KIT CY - Karlsruhe, Germany DA - 17.08.2023 KW - Lab automation KW - Data stewardship KW - Scattering KW - X-ray scattering KW - Automated synthesis KW - Data pipelines PY - 2023 AN - OPUS4-58234 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Pauw, Brian Richard T1 - Glimpses of the future: a “full stack”, highly automated materials research laboratory N2 - In our (dramatically understaffed) X-ray scattering laboratory, developing a systematic, holistic methodology let us provide scattering and diffraction information for more than 2100 samples for 200+ projects led by 120+ collaborators. Combined with automated data correction pipelines, and our analysis and simulation software, this led to more than 40 papers in the last 5 years with just over 2 full-time staff members. This year, our new, modular synthesis platform has made more than 1000 additional samples for us to analyse and catalogue. By virtue of the automation, the synthesis of these samples is automatically documented in excruciating detail, preparing them for upload and exploitation in large-scale materials databases. Having developed these proof-of-concepts, we find that materials research itself is changed dramatically by automating dull tasks in a laboratory. This talk is intended to spark ideas and collaborations by providing an overview of: 1) the current improvements in our scattering laboratory methodology, 2) introducing our open, modular robotic platform that is used for systematic sample preparation, and 3) demonstrating the data structure of the synthesis logs and measurements. Finally, the remaining bottlenecks and points of attention across all three are highlighted. T2 - FAIRmat seminar CY - Berlin, Germany DA - 28.09.2023 KW - Data stewartship KW - Metadata collection KW - Laboratory methodology KW - MOUSE KW - Robotics KW - Lab automation KW - Holistic science PY - 2023 UR - https://www.fairmat-nfdi.eu/events/brian-pauw AN - OPUS4-58464 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Pauw, Brian Richard T1 - Glimpses of the Future : Advancing X-ray Scattering in an Automated Materials Research Laboratory N2 - In our (dramatically understaffed) X-ray scattering laboratory, developing a systematic, holistic methodology1 let us provide scattering and diffraction information for more than 2100 samples for 200+ projects led by 120+ collaborators. Combined with automated data correction pipelines, and our analysis and simulation software, this led to more than 40 papers2 in the last 5 years with just over 2 full-time staff members. This year, our new, modular synthesis platform has made more than 1000 additional samples for us to analyse and catalogue. By virtue of the automation, the synthesis of these samples is automatically documented in excruciating detail, preparing them for upload and exploitation in large-scale materials databases. Having developed these proof-of-concepts, we find that materials research itself is changed dramatically by automating dull tasks in a laboratory. This talk is intended to spark ideas and invite collaborations by providing an overview of: 1) the current improvements in our wide-range X-ray scattering laboratory methodology, 2) Introduce some of our open-source analysis and simulation software, touching on scattering, diffraction and PDF, and 3) introducing our open, modular robotic platform for systematic sample preparation. Finally, the remaining bottlenecks and points of attention across all three are highlighted. T2 - Swiss Society for Crystallography (SSCr) annual meeting CY - Zurich, Switzerland DA - 08.09.2023 KW - Lab automation KW - Fourier transforms KW - X-ray scattering KW - Robotic synthesis KW - Data stewardship KW - Holistic experimental procedures KW - MOUSE KW - Metal-organic frameworks KW - High-throughput measurements PY - 2023 AN - OPUS4-58237 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Pauw, Brian Richard T1 - Glimpses of the Future : Oh my god it’s full of metadata! N2 - In this talk, the importance of metadata is underscored by real-world examples. Metadata is essential to alleviating the reproducibility crises in science. This imples that a wide range of metadata must be collected, with a heavy emphasis on the automated collection of such metadata. This must subsequently be organized in an intelligible, archival structure, when possible with units and uncertainties. Such metadata can aid in improving the usage efficiency of instrumentation, as is demonstrated on the MOUSE instrument. This metadata can now be used to connect the various aspects of the holistic experimental procedure to gain better insights on the materials structure. A second example shows the extraction and organization of such metadata from an automated materials development platform, collected during the synthesis of 1200 samples. These metadata from the synthesis can then be linked to the results from the analysis of these samples, to find direct correlations between the synthesis parameters and the final structure of the materials. T2 - Helmholtz Incubator Summer Academy - Next Level Data Science CY - Online meeting DA - 18.09.2023 KW - Metadata KW - Lab automation KW - Data provenance KW - High-throughput KW - Correlative analysis KW - MOUSE KW - X-ray scattering KW - Robotics PY - 2023 AN - OPUS4-58463 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Pauw, Brian Richard T1 - A holistic experiment chain for scattering-powered materials science investigations N2 - In our (dramatically understaffed) X-ray scattering laboratory, developing a systematic, holistic methodology1 let us provide scattering and diffraction information for more than 2100 samples for 200+ projects led by 120+ collaborators over the last five years. Combined with universal, automat-ed data correction pipelines, as well as our analysis and simulation software, this led to more than 40 papers2 in the last 5 years with just over 2 full-time staff members. While this approach greatly improved the consistency of the results, the consistency of the samples and sample series provided by the users was less reliable nor necessarily reproducible. To address this issue, we built an EPICS-controlled, modular synthesis platform to add to our laboratory. To date, this has prepared over 1200 additional (Metal-Organic Framework) samples for us to meas-ure, analyse and catalogue. By virtue of the automation, the synthesis of these samples is automat-ically documented in excruciating detail, preparing them for upload and exploitation in large-scale materials databases alongside the morphological results obtained from the automated X-ray scat-tering analysis. Having developed these proof-of-concepts, we find that the consistency of results are greatly im-proved by virtue of their reproducibility, hopefully adding to the reliability of the scientific findings as well. Additionally, the nature of the experiments has changed greatly, with much more emphasis on preparation and careful planning. This talk will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this highly integrated approach and will touch upon upcoming developments. T2 - canSAS-XIII CY - Grenoble, France DA - 16.10.2023 KW - Methodology KW - Lab automation KW - X-ray scattering KW - Automated synthesis KW - Data stewardship KW - Holistic experimental procedures KW - Scicat PY - 2023 AN - OPUS4-58643 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Pauw, Brian Richard T1 - A place for everything: traceable science using metadata from syntheses and characterisation N2 - In our laboratory, we rely heavily on automation for synthesis and measurement. Done right, automation can deliver reliable quantities of excruciatingly detailed data, produced in a reproducible and traceable way. This data then needs sorting and organising, and a good structure of metadata is a good start to long-lasting data. This metadata collection is an essential part of our “holistic experimentation”-approach. In this approach, we try to ensure that all aspects of the experimental chain are performed to a high standard, so that experimental integrity is maintained. In other words: as a failure in one of the components of the chain can make an entire experiment worthless, we must ensure each component is done (and documented) well. In this talk, we show how we 1) synthesise well-documented sample series, 2) apply a complete end-to-end X-ray scattering characterisation methodology to those samples, and 3) can link the data from the synthesis to the structural details obtained from the scattering experiments in a visual dashboard. Furthermore, we will show examples on how data can be organised in hierarchical structures in HDF5-based datafiles, and how this helps move towards more trustworthy, traceable science. About the speaker: Brian Pauw is a full-stack X-ray scattering expert with over 15 years of experience in materials science. After earning a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark in 2009, Brian advanced scattering techniques at Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science before joining BAM (Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing) in Germany as a permanent researcher. At BAM, Brian focuses on small-angle scattering of polymers, metals, catalysts, and more – developing precise methodologies for data collection, correction, and analysis. They also lead efforts in laboratory automation, including robotic systems for reproducible sample preparation, aiming to enhance the efficiency and reliability of experimental workflows. T2 - Helmholtz Metadata Collaboration: FAIR Friday Lecture Series CY - Online meeting DA - 09.05.2025 KW - Methodology KW - X-ray scattering KW - Traceability KW - Data provenance KW - Metadata KW - Lab automation KW - Holistic science PY - 2025 AN - OPUS4-63078 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Pauw, Brian Richard T1 - NeXus at the core of the HExX-lab N2 - Through bottom-up, comprehensive digitalisation of all aspects of an experiment, the HEX-lab improves the trustworthiness (traceability, reproducibility, quality) of scientific findings. The five main parts that make up a materials science experiment, i.e. Sample preparation, Measurements, Processing, Analysis, and Interpretation, each have been addressed in thorough and unique ways in this lab, building up a foundation for a wide range of materials science collaborations. Improvements span the spectrum. Hardware developments include new sample environments and stages, such as grazing incidence motion towers, electrochemistry cells and flow-through holders, electronic components such as safety interlocks and multipurpose I/O controllers, and liquid handling systems such as coolant flow cross-over systems. Software developments include: 1) a new comprehensive control system operating on both the RoWaN as well as the MOUSE allowing for full Python control and sequencing of all experimentation, 2) Automated scripts for instrument optimization, sample alignments and measurements, 3) revamped data pipelines and analysis software, standalone or launched as part of operations sequencing dashboards on servers, and 4) meticulously structured archival datafiles, fully documenting sample preparation, measurements, processing and analyses. These allow for holistic databases and dashboards to be constructed to investigate the links between synthesis parameters and resulting morphology. This presentation will highlight some of the tools and techniques developed and available in the HEX-lab over the years, from sample environments to overarching experiment and data organisation structures. T2 - Materials Science Core Facility Synergy Forum 2025 CY - Bremen, Germany DA - 26.02.2025 KW - Digitalization KW - Automation KW - HDF5 KW - Traceability KW - Data stewardship KW - Lab automation KW - Holistic science KW - Methodology PY - 2025 AN - OPUS4-62676 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Pauw, Brian Richard T1 - X-ray Scattering USAXS/SAXS/WAXS (/XRD/PDF) N2 - A ten minute introduction to the technique of X-ray scattering. This talk discusses the foundation and the resulting morphological parameters that can be obtained from the technique. The talk is prepared for discussion within the framework of the OECD REACH guideline for nanomaterials. T2 - Digitaler Info-Tag "Nano or not Nano" CY - Berlin, Germany DA - 16.02.2023 KW - X-ray scattering KW - BAM Academy KW - SAXS KW - XRD KW - WAXS KW - Nanomaterial KW - REACH KW - OECD KW - Guideline PY - 2023 AN - OPUS4-57013 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -