Please join us in welcoming Dr. Maddury S. Somayazulu as the new Group Leader of HPCAT. 

Following a competitive search, Dr. Somayazulu was selected as the new Group Leader and will be joining HPCAT-APS starting May 06, 2019.   As the Group Leader within the X-ray Science Division (XSD) of APS, Dr. Somayazulu is responsible for providing day-to-day leadership of the scientific and support staff and for managing operations and R&D activities at HPCAT-sector 16 beamlines.  In coordination with HPCAT Director Dr. Velisavljevic, Dr. Somayazulu will work with HPCAT staff to facilitate planning, construction, and implementation of synchrotron based high-pressure research techniques, aligned with XSD-APS goals and NNSA and DOE/SC sponsors. 

Dr. Somayazulu has over twenty years of experience in the area of synchrotron and high-pressure scientific research.  As a graduate student and postdoc, Dr. Somayazulu was part of the High Pressure Physics Division at Bhabha Atomic Research Center, Bombay, India.  In his early work, Dr. Somayazulu applied a broad range of modeling and experimental techniques to investigate behavior of materials at extreme pressure-temperature conditions.  Concurrently, his PhD thesis work was performed under the guidance of Professor Dr. R. Chidambaram at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center in Mumbai, India.  Following his graduate-postdoc work in India, Dr. Somayazulu joined Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution of Washington (GL-CIW) in Washington, DC as a post-doctoral researcher in 1994.  As a Carnegie Research Scientist at GL-CIW for over 20 years, Dr. Somayazulu held numerous scientific positions. Since its inception, he has been the Laboratory Manager, and more recently, the Chief Scientist for CDAC and EFree, led by Dr. Russell Hemley.  From 2001-2006 Dr. Somayazulu had also spent part of his professional career as beamline scientist, where he was in charge of helping develop and commission the first high-pressure beamline (16 ID-B) at the then newly formed High Pressure Collaborative Access Team (HPCAT) sector.

Overall, Dr. Somayazulu brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in high-pressure science and synchrotron x-ray techniques.  We are pleased to have him join HPCAT and XSD-APS and wish him and HPCAT stuff success going forward.

Nenad Velisavljevic, HPCAT Director

and

Jonathan Lang, XSD Director