The remainder of the operating funding would be for beamline operations and would be obtained through user fees from industry, federal and provincial agencies, and others. Synchrotron light, millions of times more intense than medical X-rays, would be used by both university and industry researchers to probe the structure of matter, develop new drugs, design new microchips for more powerful computers, manufacture tiny biomedical implants and create new materials. The CLS facility, which would be funded from public and private sources, could be under construction on the U of S campus as early as April. A decision on that funding is expected by the end of March. At present, Canada is the only G7 country without a synchrotron facility.
Canadian researchers find their wait for access can stretch from a few months to more than a year.
However, if the proposed synchrotron goes ahead, new research training opportunities will emerge. For example, it's expected pharmaceutical companies will set up protein crystallography laboratories in Canada to study the three-dimensional structure of proteins, research that could lead to new and better drugs. Approximately 100 graduate protein crystallographers would be trained in Canada.