Student: Michael A. Sommeling
Mentor: Dr. Jinhu Song
Project Title: Extension of Distributed Control System for Structural Molecular Biology
Project Description: Abstract—This summer, I had the pleasure to work as a Summer Undergraduate Laboratory Intern (SULI) at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. I was matched with my mentor, Dr. Jinhu Song, to work on the topic of “Extension of Distributed Control System for Structural Molecular Biology.” Distributed Control Systems (DCS) are designed to secure highly heterogeneous networked computing environments. The Blu-Ice and Distributed Control System software packages were developed to provide unified control over the different hardware resources available at the macromolecular crystallography beamlines of the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource. Blu-Ice is a user interface that provide experimenters with intuitive graphical tools for collecting diffraction data and configuring beamlines for experiments. Blu-Ice; communicates with the hardware at a beamline via an instrument-control and data-acquisition package called DCS. Together, Blu-Ice and DCS provide a flexible platform for increasing the ease of use, the level of automation, and the remote accessibility of the beamlines. The BLU-ICE DCS uses a Tool Command; Language (TCL) message passing protocol for communication between instances of the graphical user interface and the hardware control systems at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) beamlines. A central server process at each beamline handles messages sent between user interfaces and hardware control systems. The aim of this project was to extend the DCS framework by using the Python programming language to perform data analysis automatically and integrate programs to the DCS control& system. Our results indicate that Python can be used to connect to the existing BLU-ICE protocol and handle messages of the same format. I contributed to the development of the extended DCS by creating the message protocols for the BLU-ICE simulated beamline. My SULI experience has taught me many valuable research skills that I will continue to use throughout my career as a student, scientist, and engineer. Thank you.
