Despite what the name may first imply, us scatterers tend to find each other in a crowd. We did not wear a scatterer ribbon on our badges, nor a small colored tag to indicate that we welcome interaction, but it would likely be green. We use photons or subatomic particles to probe matter: neutrons, X-rays, light. Just like many delegates in the BPS subgroups, we too are a family of sorts, by force of spending so much time preparing and running experiments under the tight deadlines of allocated beamtime at large scale facilities. I was fortunate to meet up with collaborators, neutron users, and instrument scientist colleagues at this conference. After a long period with limited to no travel, it sure is a pleasure to interact in person again, to benefit from random connections and meeting new biophysicists. 

Besides talking about the best place to get a clam chowder and the tricks to get cheaper water bottles – even those of us who live in the US were shocked with California prices – the BPS Annual meeting allowed us scatterers to discover new research and talk about how the projects have evolved during the pandemic. We also exchanged ideas about remote vs in-person experiments at large scale facilities: there are advantages and disadvantages to both, for users and facilities alike, but in the end we all want to extract the experimental data possible. For some users, that means traveling in person and keeping an eye on the samples that they, and only they, got to know so well. For others, the possibility of shipping samples and running an experiment remotely is the difference between having access to that pivotal experimental data, or not. Josefine Nielsen (LB83 poster) was telling me about her excitement with scattering data and the difficulties of securing enough beamtime during the pandemic, having to juggle facility restrictions, confinements, shutdowns and upgrades. The demand on beamtime has never been higher and it is possible to run some remote experiments, but from the nosebleed seats it is not straightforward to react to the new data as it is coming out, to optimize the data collection strategy on the fly (samples do have this annoying habit of not wanting to confirm our first hypothesis). In the end it was clear that we are all looking forward to get instrument scientists and biophysicists running experiments together again.

So how can you spot us scatterers in the annual meeting crowd? Do we wear yellow jackets? Green trousers? In case you have not come across a scatterer, let me name just a few and tell you a bit about them. Every single one of us is a foodie, and most are also coffee or wine snobs. For example, on Wednesday evening David Hoogerheide was inviting me to join a meal at a Trattoria on Mason Street, where we would likely critique the food as we talk about his presentation at the Electron Microscopy and Scattering Techniques platform on Monday morning (Candor reflectometer, a new instrument for structural biology applications at the NIST center for Neutron Research). I would happily have accepted to join a scatterer meal, had I not walked a couple of hours that afternoon in the search for sea lions (in the company of a bunch of other BPS delegates).

If your presentation, poster or oral, got a visit from a scatterer, you will know. If it was me, I probably told you that neutrons are just like X-rays – in the sense that they can probe structure and dynamics of many types of materials - but very different: for example, they do not cause radiation damage, and provide great contrast between different types of biomolecules (proteins, lipids, nucleic acids, etc). Or perhaps I told you how you may be submitting your aqueous samples to 2000 atmospheres of pressure when you freeze them in the laboratory. Poor Zachary Haviland (poster B436), his poster landed right next to mine, I filled his ears about trying to use pressure to improve cellulose fiber accessibility during the Tuesday poster session. It could be worse, Zachary, I didn’t even start bragging about the Portuguese olive oil... If the BPS scatterer you met at the annual meeting was Tommy Nylander, you may have heard about the best places to get oysters all around the world, the morphologies and structure of brain lipids in aqueous solutions (poster B192), or the upcoming neutron spallation source in Europe. Lionel Porcar, who used to be my office-mate when I worked at a neutron center in Grenoble, may have also visited your poster or asked you a question at your presentation: he will give you a hard time about not preparing the perfect samples, and will tell you off if you are not at a restaurant on time, but he will also help you make the most of every neutron (to get that most best science). Ursula Perez-Salas will have told you why sterol structure matters, on the Sunday poster session (poster B155), and likely also talked about her obsession with the northern lights. If Elizabeth Kelley was the scatterer you crossed paths with, you may now know that she will be the new chair of the Membrane Structure and Function subgroup, or perhaps she gave you a Ghirardelli treat? If you went over to the vendor exhibition to get away from us scatterers, well, think again. You will find them there too. Yes, they too have chocolates, candy, and a bunch of other colorful things that will turn you into a member of our family before you can say high pressure is not physiological. It was a pleasure connecting with family and non-family BPS delegates at San Francisco, and to blog about it!