The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) organizes a Workshop on Advances in X-Ray Instrumentation for Cultural Heritage Applications, to be held at the ICTP in Trieste, from 13 to 17 July 2015.

The purpose of the workshop is to inform and educate scientists on recent instrumental developments that improve and expand the analytical merits of X-ray based techniques for Cultural Heritage (CH) applications. Nowadays, X-ray based methodologies are applied for the characterization of cultural materials in a broad context, in-situ in museum and archaeological sites, using versatile handheld and portable devices or at advanced accelerator charged particle and synchrotron radiation facilities. The end-user community of this technology rapidly expands including now conservation scientists, professionals, CH Institutions and researchers from museums analytical laboratories and archaeological departments. The workshop program will emphasize hands-on practical sessions to familiarize the participants with the instrumentation and analytical features of handheld and portable X-ray spectrometers, including access to the IAEA end-station at the X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) beamline of Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste and the experimental facilities of the ICTP Multidisciplinary Laboratory.

The following specific topics will be included:

• Trends and Developments in X-Ray Spectrometry Instrumentation
• Handheld/Portable XRF Analysers: In-situ methodologies, best practices, quantitative analyses;
• 2D and 3D elemental/chemical speciation analysis
and imaging using micro-XRF and micro-XANES spectrometries;
• Standard-less XRF quantification and related software;
• Macro and Full-Field XRF analysis;
• XRF/XRD 2D imaging and micro-computed tomography (microCT);
• External Ion Beam Analysis;
• Hands-on sessions on Handheld/Portable XRF analyzers, microCT,
dual XRF-XRD analysis, Synchrotron micro-XRF and micro-XANES analysis.