XM² PGR David Newman (1st year, supervised by Prof Rob Hicken and Dr Mustafa Aziz ) recently went to the Advanced Light Source in Berkeley, California where he was using X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD), X-ray ferromagnetic resonance (XFMR) and other magnetic spectroscopic techniques to characterise spin currents in ferromagnetic/anti-ferromagnetic/ferromagnetic trilayer structures and probe the dynamics of exchange spring meta-materials. He kicked off his PhD project by learning more about the software used, developing his magnetic spectroscopy skills and generally gaining experience for future beam-times in Berkeley.