Last June, the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) at DESY in Hamburg, Germany hosted the Ultrafast X-ray Summer School 2017. UXSS 2017 was jointly organized by CFEL and the PULSE institute at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The summer school covers topics rangind from accelerator physics to molecular biology, and is intended to provide doctoral and posdoctoral researchers with the opportunity to learn about the latest developments and opportunities in ultrafast X-ray Science.

During UXSS, participants were asked to form groups and work on a mock proposal for the European XFEL, to be presented in poster format. Proposals were reviewed by a panel of senior scientists at the end of workshop and the prize for best proposal was attributed to the team that ESRs Matilde Trabuco and Robert Bosman were a part of, for their proposal entitled “Detangling the reaction mechanism of human aromatase using the European XFEL