Educating. Supporting. Illuminating.

As a national research facility, WiFEL will be as committed to science education as it will be to research as part of the critically important training of the next generation of researchers. This concept is not new to UW Madison and the Synchrotron Radiation Center (SRC) where hundreds of graduate students and postdoctoral research fellows have benefited from doing research at the Tantalus and Aladdin storage rings as part of their graduate education and training. The R&D program will offer a rare opportunity to expand U.S. graduate education in beam and FEL physics, monochromator design, advanced laser systems, and the technologies supporting accelerator-based facilities including undulators, photo injectors, superconductivity and cryogenics.

The R&D program will, also, support several outreach efforts including: a Research Experiences for Undergraduate (REU) program where students will be able to participate in accelerator design and applications, a six-week summer internship for high school students in cooperation with UW Madison’s PEOPLE program, and a Research Experience for Teachers (RET) program that will help support high school science teachers as they seek to bring research experience into their classrooms.

The following is a listing of undergraduate students who have worked on or are currently working on FEL related projects:

2005 - Marcus Medley – "Beam Breakup and Phase Advance in Recirculating Linacs."
2006 – Marcus Medley – "A Study into the Feasibility of Recirculating a Free Electron Laser (FEL) Driver."
2008 – Michaela Allen – "The Effects of Field Curvature on Bunch Formation in RF Electron Guns."
2009 – Disa Walden – "Connecting the Dots: Exploring WiFEL's Beamline 2 Over Its Full Energy Range."
2009 – Michaela Allen – "Research of superconducting cavity design and fabrication techniques" – Joint program with NioWave, Inc.

Learn more about the current SRC education and outreach efforts at: http://www.src.wisc.edu/outreach/index.htm