Monthly submission proposals


Beamlines XRD1 and XRD2 offer users an accelerated path for proposal submission related to

·      small molecules (SMX) and 
·      macromolecular crystallography  (MX) Experiments.

In comparison with the standard semestral submission at Elettra (proposals evaluated every 6 months), the following features have been implemented:
  •     no deadline: it is now possible to submit a proposal at any time;
  •     proposal evaluation occurs at the beginning of every month;
  •     beamtime allocation start immediatly after evaluation;
  •     automatic re-submission in cases of overbooking.
We strongly encourage SMX and MX users to take advantage of this new procedure. 
XRD1 still accepts the semestral submission for proposals requiring dedicated or particularly complex setups which would alter the standard configuration of the beamline or require extra support from the beamline staff.
XRD2 accepts proposals via the monthly submission route only.

Description

The mechanism is dedicated to scientific communities using well-defined experimental setups. Typically the samples quality is optimum when freshly obtained and rapid access to beam time maximizes the outcome of the experiments. The new proposal submission system reduces significantly the time period between proposal submission and beam time allocation and assumes that the crystalline samples are already available. 
It is valid for 
  • single crystal small molecules samples (natural and synthetic molecules, supramolecular chemistry, MOF, ...) -> XRD1 beamline 
  • powder samples (polymorphism/phase detection/phase transition, ...) -> XRD1 beamline
  • single crystal macromolecular crystallography (protein, DNA, RNA, protein-ligand, protein-protein interaction) -> XRD2 beamline
The monthly submission process is in place and active all year, so no deadlines to take into consideration. At the beginning of every month, all new proposals submitted are evaluated by an appropriate Review Panel. The beamtime allocation is made by the beamline scientist according to the Scientific score assigned and the time available. The scheduling of the beam time is usually done within the month or as soon as possible depending on the availibility of beam time at the beamline (see VUO calendar). The whole procedure is accessible via VUO following the link "Submit a proposal for small molecules and macromolecular crystallography (evaluated monthly - more info )".

In case of overbooking the proposals not allocated are automatically re-submitted for the following month, (keeping the assigned rating value) for a maximum of six times.

In case of questions

For enquiries please contact: 
Last Updated on Friday, 11 December 2020 15:01