In this fiscal year 2020, "SPRUC 2020 Young Scientist Award" which was being invited had six candidates by the closing date. SPRUC 2020 Young Scientist Award Review Committee had rigorous process for selecting two winners. The SPRUC 2020 Young Science Award (YSA) is given to a young scientist who is recognized as having established a notable achievement in the development of a new experimental technique or a new method for data analysis, or having achieved remarkable results in the studied field by making use of the characteristic features of SPring-8/SACLA.

Award winner : Dr.Taito Osaka (RIKEN SPring-8 Center)
Research subject : The development and use of a unique x-ray optics for free electron lasers
Citation for the award : The challenge for experimenters of XFEL is to develop new X-ray optics to manipulate the beam for hard x-rays. These optics mimic the optical components that are in common use with ultrafast optical lasers. Specifically there are great demands in materials science to push the x-ray analog of dynamic light scattering, x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS) into the femtosecond domain. Dr. Osaka has been at the forefront of these developments, first with the fabrication of thin perfect crystals for division of amplitude, Dr. Osaka incorporated these crystals in a split and delay system. Dr. Osaka having pursued division of amplitude recognized the difficulties and so decided on following the other option, division of wavefront. While not ideal it allows for stable operation and the development of two pulse XPCS. Dr. Osaka and collaborators developed a division of wavefront optical system and used it to characterize the temporal coherence of the SACLA beam with single shot interferograms. Most recently Dr.Osaka has worked on another critical x-ray component, a micro-channelcut crystal that is at the heart of the self-seeding system in operation at SACLA. Dr. Osaka addressed the difficult task of the development and use of a unique x-ray optics for free electron lasers, and made a significant contribution to the XFEL science which well deserves Young Scientist Award.

Award winner :Dr.Longjian Xie (Bayerisches Geoinstitut, University of Bayreuth)
Research subject :Development of X-ray transparent materials in large volume high pressure apparatus and its application to silicate melt viscosity measurements.
Citation for the award :The materials study under various extreme conditions is a forte of a high brightness synchrotron light source, like SPring-8, and the technology development for those measurements is an important theme. High-pressure and high-temperature (HPHT) experiments are indispensable means to understand the earth’s interior. Dr. Xie successfully synthesized Boron-doped diamond (BDD) as a heater in the Kawai-type multi-anvil apparatus (KMA), and could reach 4000K under high pressure using the SPring-8 beamline, which is the highest record using KMA. KMA can generate pressures in a much larger volume than that of the Diamond anvil cell (DAC), and thus has been widely used in various X-ray measurements revealing physical and chemical properties of minerals under the earth’s mantle conditions.
Along with these developments, Dr. Xie succeeded in measuring the viscosity of silicate melts by in-situ falling sphere viscometry under high pressure-temperature condition of lower-mantle. This measurement is believed to give an important physical property to elucidate the mechanism of the mantle state formation and its dynamics over the Earth’s history, which is one of the central issues in Earth science. Judging from these results being published in Nature Communications, Dr. Xie achieved an attractive work in the field of Earth science. Therefore, Dr. Xie’s contribution to the Earth science as well as SPring-8 deserves Young Science Award.