Meet the people: Tina Weigel

Today I want you to meet Tina Weigel. She participated the Stoe LabMeeting and won one of the poster prizes, which was my reason to get in touch with her and ask her a little bit about herself and on her fascinating research topic.

She is a master student in „Angewandte Naturwissenschaften“ („Applied Natural Sciences“) at the Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg in Germany and intends to dive further into science by doing her PhD. She also works in the local crystallographic competence center NCrystED at TU-Freiberg as a student assistant. She started her early research career with the influence of environmental parameters on X-rays intensities and with her poster she shared her results with the community.

1) Can you tell us a little bit about the topic of your poster?

The topic of my poster is “Influence of environmental parameters variations on X-ray beam intensities – A time-dependent absorption correction”. We analyzed the impact of environmental parameters, like laboratory and outside temperature, barometric pressure, relative humidity, cooling water temperature as well as daily and weekly cycles on the primary beam intensity. These parameters influenced the X-ray transmission in air. If these parameters change over the measuring time, then the transmission as well as the intensity change, too. We used these for an absorption correction of the X-ray intensities afterwards in dependence of the changes of environmental parameters during the measuring time.
[For those who are more interested in the topic, can take a look at Tinas poster]

2) What was the biggest problem of this research project and how did you solved it?

The biggest problem was the statistical analyses of the parameters to investigation the strength and the direction of the correlation with the X-ray intensity. During my studies I hadn’t statistical lectures and I wasn’t sure which statistical methods can I use. I found help in the Institute of Stochastic of the university by Dr. Andreas Wünsche.

3) What fascinates you most about X-ray beam intensities?

It was fascinating to see that changes of environmental parameters, like natural fluctuations of barometric pressure and temperature have a visible and significant influence of the X-ray beam intensity. These obvious dependencies of environmental parameters and intensity weren’t investigating in detail before and aren’t taking into account by the different X-ray measuring methods.

4) What was your favourite part of the Stoe LabMeeting and why?

It was the STOE Lab Tour to see X-ray lab and the diffractometers. I also liked the lightning talks/poster session and the barbeque. It was a good opportunity to come into contact with other young scientist and members of STOE and talk about their research and problems. It was two nice days at STOE, thanks to the organizers.

Darmstadt 2015 Poster Prizes

Tina Weigel is the smart looking woman, together with the other poster prize winners and representatives from the Young Crystallographers and Stoe.