SPRUC 2021 Young Scientist Award

In this fiscal year 2021, "SPRUC 2021 Young Scientist Award" which was being invited had ten candidates by the closing date.
　SPRUC 2021 Young Scientist Award Review Committee had rigorous process for selecting two winners.

The SPRUC 2021 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. Yuki Takayama / Graduate School of Science, University of Hyogo
Research subject	Development of lens-less nanoimaging method using coherent X-rays for visualization of spatiotemporally hierarchical structures in materials and biological sciences
Citation for the award	Dr. Yuki Takayama has newly developed a multi-shot CDI method that can reconstruct a movie of sample structure change by phase-retrieving all frames that are continuously exposed to a time-evolving diffraction pattern instead of every frame at the Hyogo Beamline BL24XU. The multi-shot CDI method was put into practical use for the first time by implementing this method in the in-situ observation CDI device that had already been developed. It was applied to the Brownian motion of colloidal particles dispersed in a solution and the movement of nanopattern samples radially processed into a tantalum foil with a thickness of 500 ㎚, and succeeded in observing a movie with a temporal-resolution of 10 ㎳ and a spatial resolution of 80 ㎚. As this is a great achievement, it is highly evaluated that this method has made it possible to observe a local region at high speed and in a wide field of view, which was difficult to observe using the conventional x-ray ptychography method. This method can visualize the internal structures of biological amorphous samples such as cells and various amorphous samples in a time-division manner; therefore, it can be applied to a variety range of scientific and industrial fields. In fact, the Hyogo Beamline has been put into service in the industrial world since 2018, and 14 companies have already used this imaging technology. It is expected that it will greatly contribute to the development research of the industrial world in the future. His contribution to these achievements and synchrotron X-ray science is so outstanding that he deserves the SPRUC 2021 Young Scientist Award.

Award winner	Dr. Natsuki Tomida / Research Center for Nuclear Physics, Osaka University
Research subject	Study of the origin of hadron mass using GeV photon beam
Citation for the award	The LEPS2 experimental station at BL31LEP of SPring-8, the beamline for hadron photoproduction experiments, was established to study the internal structure of hadrons and partial recovery of chiral symmetry through a change in meson mass of nuclei as a probe in the area not covered by the former BL33 LEPS. This experimental station was set up to explore the internal structure of hadrons by using high-energy gamma-ray beams obtained by inverse Compton scattering between lasers and electrons moving at high speed in the SPring-8 storage ring. In order to minimize the load on the data readout system, it is necessary to install a detector that can cover a stereoscopic angle with a small number of readouts and at the same time has a high temporal resolution. Dr. Natsuki Tomida started to develop a Resistive Plate Chamber that meets these requirements, and eventually achieved a large area of more than 250 ㎠ and a high temporal resolution of 60 ㎰. Dr. Tomida installed the detector at SPring-8 BL31LEP, and took on the challenging task of elucidating the mass production mechanism of matter through the mass change of η' mesons in nuclei. Based on her own idea, the proton involved in the production of the η' meson and the decay particle of the η' meson were measured simultaneously, which dramatically reduced the background and realized accurate measurements. This achievement paves the way for future searches using high statistical experiments. Thus, Dr. Tomida has already taken the leadership in high statistical precision experiments in the field of nuclei and hadrons, and there is no question that she is an excellent young researcher with exceptional abilities who would surely play an active role in the future. From this point of view, Dr. Natsuki Tomida deserves the winner of the Young Scientist Award 2021.