Brief background
The 4th High-Pressure Single-Crystal X-Ray Diffraction Summer School will take place at the University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, Scotland) from Monday 6 July to Friday 10 July 2026 inclusive. This five-day long School aims at providing an introduction to a novel method of single-crystal X-ray diffraction (SCXRD) structure studies at extreme pressures generated in a diamond anvil cell to early career stage scientists (master and PhD students, post-docs) and established scientists working in the field of high pressure research.
The recent methodological advancements in high-pressure SCXRD drastically extends its applications, previously mostly limited to ~20 GPa and large single crystals, now reaching hundreds of GPa and temperatures of thousands of degrees on submicron-sized polycrystalline aggregates. An overview of the necessary fundamental theoretical and methodological principals, including diamond anvil cell preparation, strategy of experiments, laser-heating, introduction to software and SCXRD, will be covered through lectures accompanied by demonstrations, hands-on sessions, and step-by-step tutorials. At the end of the School, participants are expected to be able to perform basic high pressure SCXRD experiments, as well as data processing and interpretation.
The School is building on the huge success of the three previous iterations (see Previous Workshops).
Details of the School
The School will be held in the James Clerk Maxwell Building of the University of Edinburgh’s King’s Buildings campus. The School aims at welcoming 35 participants.
All participants are expected to bring and present a poster on their research topic.
Please make sure to bring your own computer/laptop, since there are no computers in any of the rooms for this summer school. Moreover, for the softwares to work correctly, it is very strongly encouraged to use a Windows operating system.
Once a participant application has been accepted, they will be asked to pay the registration fee. The fee, which includes accommodation and meals for the length of the School, will be about 500 GBP for residential and 120 GBP for non-residential (does not include accommodation). This is thanks to our generous sponsors, namely DAC Tools, Rigaku, Almax easyLab and SUSSP.
Accommodation will be covered from Sunday 5 July to Friday 10 July (5 nights). If you require an additional night on Friday 10 July the cost will be 77 GBP.
The full details on the School's covered topics can be found here.
The application deadline is 30 April 2026. All applications will be reviewed and a final decision on acceptance will be made by 7 May 2026. If your application is successful you will be required to pay the registration fee by 22 May 2026.
Important Dates
- Application deadline: 30.04.2026
- Acceptance decision: 07.05.2026
- Registration fee payment deadline: 22.05.2026
- Arrivals: 05.07.2026
- School dates: 06.07.2026-10.07.2026
Should you have any questions, please contact sopa.events@ed.ac.uk
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