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A man wearing a burgundy sweater, light-blue button-down shirt, and dark-rimmed eyeglasses stands in front of machinery made of transparent and black-toned materials while holding a large, rainbow-colored reflective disc in a clean room setting with white walls. A clean room with employees working at workstations on the left, a work table in the center with an employee looking down at a sample. The Advanced Light Source dome as seen from an aerial drone at sunset looking towards the San Francisco Bay and Golden Gate Bridge. Bruno La Fontaine, Director of the Center for X-ray Optics (CXRO), speaks on how the CXRO supports the microchip industry. Two researchers donning personal protective equipment inspect a mirror chamber used to create custom and dynamic illumination patterns for testing the limits of semiconductor materials. Scientist in protective eyewear adjusts a microscope in a high-tech lab filled with optical and electronic equipment. A recipe for energy efficiency: an optical sensor that also processes data. The transparent dome represents interactions between photons (red and green) and the nanoscale elements on the substrate. Carbon nanotubes with quantum dots (small spheres) are shown connected to CMOS circuitry below. 2 rows of 3 scanning tunnel microscope images showing purple shapes against a dark background. A rendering in paraview of the product of the 3D reconstruction. (Credit: David Raftrey) Three individuals are pictured in separate circular frames against a background of a green circuit board. The person on the left has a beard and short dark hair, wearing a blue shirt. The person in the center has long black hair and is smiling, wearing a dark shirt. The person on the right has a beard and is wearing a suit jacket over a white shirt. A woman, left, and a man look at visual data on several monitors with components of an electron microscope nearby. Sayeef Salahuddin (left) and Nirmaan Shanker in the lab.