MEETINGS
Guidlines for organisation of an ECM
Guidelines for financial support
Highlights from National Meetings
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MEETINGS
Guidlines for organisation of an ECM
Guidelines for financial support
Highlights from National Meetings
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The Associazione Italiana di Cristallografia (AIC) and the Grupo Especializado de Cristalografia y Crecimiento Cristalino (GE3C) have agreed to join their respective annual meetings in the year 2007. The first meeting of the Italian and Spanish Crystallographic Associations (MISCA) was held in Copanello di Stallettì (Calabria, Italy) from September 24 to 28 2007, and organized by the Department of Chemistry and the Laboratory of X Ray Diffraction (LDiffRax) of the Centre of Excellence in Functional Nanostructurated Materials of the University of Calabria.
The University of Calabria (Unical), located in the south of Italy, is a medium size university and one of the few examples of residential university campuses in Italy. Unical provides high quality education focused on students qualification in important fields such Arts, Economics, Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Natural Sciences, Pharmacy and Political Sciences. The primary goals are academic excellence, internationalization, integration of our students in other university realities, expansion and support of international student exchanges.
Misca2007 has taken place at Gugliemo Village, in Copanello, a top class hotel resort on the Calabrian ionic coast, and was attended by 143 scientists (well distributed between Italian and Spanish) properly skilled in the fields of Crystallography and Crystal Growth. Recent advancements and frontiers in the investigation of structure and properties of crystalline materials constituted the core of the scientific program organized in 8 miscro-symposia:
The meeting included 7 plenary lectures given by:
David R. Allan form Diamond Light Source, Didcot, Oxforshire, Hector A. Calderon from ESFM-IPN, Mexico, Angelo Gavezzotti from the University of Milan, Carmelo Giacovazzo from IC-CNR, Bari, Miguel Julve from University of Valencia, Carlos Pina from University of Complutense, Madrid, Roger Williams from Research Council Centre, Cambridge.
20 keynote lectures, 22 oral presentations and 50 poster presentations. Details containing the Misca program can be found at http://misca2007.unical.it web site.
During the meeting, special sessions have been reserved to "Nardelli Price 2007", reserved to young crystallographers, and the first Mario Mammi Price, devoted to senior crystallographers and their exceptional contribution to the development of the Italian Crystallagraphy, sponsored by the AIC.
Two young crystallographers received the Nardelli Price 2007 and summarized their results during the Opening ceremony of the meeting: Simona Galli (University of Insubria) reporting on "Playing with Powder Diffraction on Functional Transition Metal Pyridiminolates"; and Loretta Pretto (University of Ferrara) reporting on "Comprehensive View on Hydrogen Bond Theory".
In a special after dinner session the first Mario Mammi medal has been awarded to Prof. Giuseppe Zanotti from the University of Padova and the celebration was followed by a talk on "Pathogenicity factors of Helicobacter pylori. The crystallographic perspective"
Four grants of 375 euros each have been provided by the European Crystalographic Association (ECA) and the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) and assigned to the young researchers Tiziana Chiodo (University of Parma), Laura Torre Fernandez (University of Oviedo), Irene Metra, (University of Florence), Laura Giurato (University of Catania).
Misca was co-sponsored by the Department of Chemistry of the University of Calabria and by the following companies, which actively participated to the meeting trough oral presentations and/or disposable stands:
Bruker AXS Milano, Rigaku Europe UK, Thermo Scientific Italia, Oxford Diffraction Limited UK, Molecular Dimensions Limited UK, PANalytical Milano, CCDC Cambridge UK.
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The XXXV Annual Meeting of the Italian Association of Crystallography (AIC) was held in Ferrara from September 18 to 21, 2006, and was organised by the Department of Chemistry and the Centre for Structural Diffractometry of the University of Ferrara.
Ferrara is one of the most beautiful towns in Italy, and is located near to the Po Delta. The Historic Centre of Ferrara was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as a shining example of a Renaissance city that has retained its historic centre virtually intact. The founding of the university in 1391 was the beginning of a new era of cultural development that made the Este court one of the most important in Europe.
The XXXV meeting of the Italian Association of Crystallography was attended by 142 scientists active in researches based on Crystallography and Crystal Growth. The meeting included 6 plenary lectures (given by Guy Orpen from Bristol University; Artem Oganov from ETH, Zurich; Bart Kahr from Washington University; Luigi Nassimbeni from Cape Town University; Thomas R. Schneider from European Institute of Oncology, Milan; Fabia Gozzo from P. Scherrer Institute, Villigen), 16 keynote lectures, 23 oral communications and 68 poster presentations organised into 7 micro-symposia:
More details concerning the conference program can be found at: http://web.unife.it/convegni/aic2006/
The recipients of the "Nardelli Prize 2006" (which recognises excellence and novelty of the researches done by young crystallographers) summarised their results during the Opening ceremony of the meeting. Luca Bindi (University of Florence) reported on "Unusual Crystallographic Approches to Study Complex Minerals: the Case of Modulated and Conductive Compounds" and Rita Berisio (University of Naples) reported on "Inactivation mechanism of antibiotics through X-ray crystallography".
The AIC medal was awarded Giuseppe Filippini in recognition of the careful and clever work done for the Italian Association of Crystallography and the European Crystallographic Association. Two poster prices for young researcher, kindly sponsored by Rigaku Europe, were awarded to Fabrizio Nestola and Loredana Erra.
The meeting was co-sponsored by the University of Ferrara, Ferrara Town Hall and by the companies PANalytical S.r.l - Milano, Rigaku Europe – Kemsing (UK), Bruker AXS S.r.l. - Milano, Berco S.p.A – Copparo (I), and Matrix Technologies, Cinisello Balsamo.
Following a long tradition, the meeting ended with a conference dinner at the "Il Don Giovanni" restaurant, in one of the historical and beautiful buildings in Ferrara.
The next annual meeting will be held in Copanello (Calabria) in the last week of September 2007; for the first time, Italian researchers in the various areas of interest for crystallography and crystal growth will gather with their Spanish colleagues. More details will be given soon on the website.
Some photos from the AIC congress (click to enlarge)
| AIC-medallist: Giuseppe Filippini | Three moments of the social dinner | ||
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Toulouse, France, July 10-13 2006
The French Crystallographic Association Meeting was held in Toulouse, a city located in the south west of France, known as the pink city from the red bricks used for construction and also well known for its aircraft industries with the building of Airbus planes. The meeting took place in the old tobacco factory, an elegant building now part of the University of Social Sciences which is close to the heart of the town.
There were five plenary lectures. Georges Tsoucaris from the gCentre de Recherches des Musées de Franceh at gLe Louvreh, Paris, paid a tribute to Hubert Curien, an outstanding figure in the field of crystallography who died last year. Marcel Knossow, from the gLaboratoire dfEnzymologie et Biochimie Structuralesh at Gif-sur-Yvette gave a fascinating lecture on the gAssemblies of low dimensionality in eukaryotic cellsh. Armand Coujou from the gCentre d'Elaboration de Matériaux et d'Etudes Structuralesh gave an overview of the use of X-ray in the analyses of material textures used in aeronautic industry. Howard Flack from the University of Geneva presented the use and understanding of the enantiopole parameter. The last plenary lecture was given by Eva Pebay-Peyroula from the gInstitut de Biologie Structuraleh at Grenoble on gProteins and lipids membrane systems: a balance to be foundh.
The conference covered a wide range of topics and was organized in parallel sessions including Structural phase transition; Cellular signal transduction and regulation; Crystallography under extreme conditions; Structural immunology, virology and microbiology; Properties and structures of molecular systems; Macromolecule-ligand-solvent interactions; Nanomaterials, thin films and surfaces; Dynamics of macromolecules; Constraints, textures and microstructures; and Large protein assemblies. Moreover a common session on emerging methods in structural analyses, followed by two parallel workshops on the teaching of crystallography and developments and requirements for X-ray synchrotron and neutron sources were held on Tuesday afternoon the 11th of July. For more program details, see the web site: http://www.afc2006-toulouse.org/.
There were twenty five invited talks, forty oral communications and 92 poster presentations, all generating a lot of interest and many discussions from the 220 delegates which attended the conference, most of them coming from France but also Spain, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. The General Assembly of the French Association of Crystallography was held on Tuesday afternoon.
Thanks to the scientific committee, the general scientific and presentation standards of contribution were high. The efforts of all the members of the local organizing committee were also important in the success of this meeting, which was really a pleasant event. Parallel to the meeting, a commercial exhibition was held. Thanks are due to the exhibitors for their financial support.
The meeting ended with a conference dinner held in one of the historical and beautiful room gsalle des colonnesh of the gHôtel-Dieuh located close to the Garonne river.
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| Conference participants at one of the oral session | Conference participants at the poster session | A French touch of the welcome buffet hold in the beautiful bricks made basement of the Old Tobacco Factory |
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Association Marocaine de Cristallographie |
CRYSTALLOGRAPHY IN MOROCCO
The Third Moroccan School of Crystallography (EMC3)
The Third Moroccan School of crystallography was held in Agadir from May, 8 – 12, 2006. 132 crystallographers from North Africa, Europe, US and Japan attended this school. About one third of the participants were women, more than 60% of participants were young researchers. The IUCr was represented by its President Professor Yuji Ohashi and the former President Professor Willams Duax. This was the third time that a high ranking official of the IUCr attended a meeting of crystallography in Morocco.
Organized by the University of Agadir and the Moroccan Crystallographic Association (AMC) with the financial support of the IUCr and ECA, the 3rd school was an opportunity for Moroccan crystallographers, experts and young researchers, to get together with their foreign colleagues and to discuss their last achievements.
The school main topic was Crystallography in Material Science. There were 15 lectures and 3 afternoon workshops devoted to computer programs for structure determination. Lectures and workshops were conducted both in French and English languages. Lecturers and instructors were from Morocco (8), France (7), Egypt (1), Germany (1), Italy (1), Japan (1), South Africa (1) and USA (1).
The opening lecture on Structure Analysis of Unstable Species Produced in Crystalline State was delivered by Y. Ohashi(Japan). A presentation of Crystallography and pharmaceutical sciences was given by N.E. Ghermani (France).
A session devoted to the Methods for structure resolution was conducted by C. Giacovzzo (Italy), M. Giorgi (France), A. Le Bail (France) and P. Gravereau.
W. Depmeier (Germany), R. Portier (France) and K. Seyed (Egypt) discussed the Structural phase transitions, its applications to metallic alloys and its effect on the microstructural properties of materials.
A. Roodt (South Africa) presented a conference on New coin metal based structures and materials with special emphasis on Ag.
N. Bouhmaida (Morocco) talked about the Electrostatic potential of the molecular surface and its relationship with the crystalline density. The Crystallography of thin films was developed by A. Perrin. W. Duax gave two lectures, the first one on The genes, amino acid sequences structures of short chain oxydoreductase enzymes and the second on Mechanism of ion transport and gating in gramicidin nanotubes.
The students presented their posters during the four days and discussed with seniors about their achievements and the difficulties encountered in their research works.
One morning was reserved for the sponsors of the School to present the new X-Rays instruments.
The school was ended by the Elective General Assembly of the members of the Moroccan Crystallographic Association. The president and the treasurer presented the report of the activities and the financial report of the last four years. The General Assembly adopted the two reports by unanimous vote.
A new Executive Committee was elected for 4 years, it is constituted with follow members:
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Finally on behalf of the all members of the Moroccan Crystallographic Association I would like to thank the IUCr and the ECA for having interest in our periodic crystallographic meeting and its financial support.
Abdelmalek THALAL
President of the AMC
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Rayons X et Matière - RX 2006Limoges (France), February 20-23, 2006
The « X-rays and condensed matter » conference (Rayons X et Matière, in French) is the sixth of a series started in 1995 for the centenary of X-rays discovery by Röntgen. Following the previous meetings, this sixth edition which has been held at Limoges, principally aims at mixing scientists coming both from academic or industrial laboratories and working with x-ray techniques for the study of condensed matter and companies building up the x-ray diffractometers, spectrometers, or any kind of x-ray machines devoted to the characterization of condensed matter. Emphasis is put on x-rays contribution to the understanding of structure and properties of condensed matter rather than results in the field of material science. Thematics concern essentially instrumentation and methods applied for analysing obtained data using these different techniques: small angle and diffuse scattering, diffraction, fluorescence and absorption spectroscopy, in situ measurements, application of all these methods to industrial problems, measurements in technical laboratories or expertise agencies. This colloquium is voluntary interdisciplinary and thus brings together physicists, chemists, mechanists etc. interested in the study of condensed matter with x-rays.
This new edition has been held at the ESTER technopole located in the North area of Limoges (France). The program was scheduled on six half days (sessions) starting Monday 12h and finishing Thursday 12h, each of them being introduced by an invited conference:
During the conference, a plenary lecture entitled « Experimental analysis of microstructures » was given by Prof. G. Kostorz (ETH, Zurich).
Coffee breaks of about 1 hour were organized at ESTER during afternoon for reinforcing links with exhibitor companies and discussions around posters which were visible all time during the conference. A wide place was devoted in the schedule to companies building up the x-ray machines that actively participate to the colloquium, notably when exposing their material in the technopole.
This colloquium has brought together 120 participants originating principally from France but also a few from Switzerland, Belgium and North Africa. About 80 communications have been presented during the six sessions and 11 companies have exposed their scientific material. A collective book with pedagogical writing based on the invited conferences will be soon published by Hermes Sciences. The next edition of the colloquium will be held at Dijon (France) in December 2007.
This conference has been co-organized with two French scientific societies, Association Française de Cristallographie (AFC) (which provided bursaries for students) and the Société Française de Métallurgie et Matériaux (SF2M).
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 PDF brochure (6.2 Mb) |
Speakers, poster prize winners and organizers of the fourth Belgian Crystallography Symposium BCS-4
The 13. annual meeting of the German Crystallographic Association (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Kristallographie, DGK) was held from February 28th to March 4th, 2005 in Cologne. The meeting was organised together with the German Society for Crystal Growth (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Kristallwachstum und Kristallzüchtung, DGKK), and the National Committee for Crystallography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The local arrangements were made by the institutes for Inorganic Chemistry, Biochemistry, Crystallography, and the II. Physics Institute of the University of Cologne.
510 participants from 13 countries attended the meeting. The scientific program covered the full range of crystallography with key issues in:
The following key-note lectures were presented:
In addition, 137 short oral contributions were given in 21 micro-symposia. Almost 260 poster contributions were presented in three sessions. Abstracts of the contributions are published as Supplement Issue No. 22 to the Zeitschrift für Kristallographie.
On Monday evening a reception with the typical local beer "Kölsch" was followed by a distinction ceremony, held in the venerable assembly hall of the University of Cologne. The DGK paid homage to its former chairman and present vice-chairman P. Paufler with the presentation of the Carl-Hermann-Medal. In recognition of his scientific work and its contributions to the DGK as well as to the IUCr and the ECA a honorific speech by the DGK national committee representative W. Neumann (who unexpectedly could not join the meeting) was given by the present DGK chairman W. Depmeier. The 2005 young-scientists Laue award went to G. Schwarz from the TU Braunschweig for his contributions in structural biology. The meanwhile traditional Laue award-lecture was presented by the 2004 laureate, D. Meyer from the TU Dresden, who reported his work on "The structure determination of thin layers by resonant interactions with X-rays". Another highlight of the social program was the conference dinner, a "Kölsches Büffet".
The generous financial support by more than 25 companies and the IUCr has to be gratefully acknowledged. Thanks for a tremendous work and a superb organisation go to the organizers of the meeting from the participating institutes in Cologne.
The German and Austrian crystallographers very much enjoyed thir successful meeting. We look forward participating in the 14. annual meeting to be held from the 3rd to the 6th of April, 2006 in Freiburg/Breisgau (www.dgk-2006.de).
K. Knorr
Secretary of the DGK
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ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗ ΚΡΥΣΤΑΛΛΟΓΡΑΦΙΚΗ ΕΤΑΙΡΕΙΑ |
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HELLENIC CRYSTALLOGRAPHIC ASSOCIATION |
The Hellenic Crystallographic Association organized two events in 2004.
Its 2nd conference at NCSR "Demokritos" in Athens Greece, October 15-16, 2004. Oral and poster presentations covered many aspects of crystallography. Some of the topics of the lectures were: supramolecular organization in archeological samples (G. Tsoucaris, Louvre, Paris), photonic crystals (N. Stefanou, U of Athens), combining electron microscopy and X-Ray techniques (J. Navaza, CNRS, Paris), apolipoprotein peptide models (M. Sakarellos-Daitsiotis, U of Ioannina), structural studies of nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (S. Tzartos, U of Patras), structural investigations of titin (M. Wilmanns, EMBL, Hamburg), epigenetic DNA code (E. Moudrianakis, Johns Hopkins U, Baltimore), cyclodextrin structure (K. Yannakopoulou, NCSR Demokritos, Athens), powder diffraction of proteins (I. Margiolaki, ESRF, Grenoble), microporous coordination polymers (S. Skoulika, U of Ioannina), thermostable proteins (C. Vorgias, U of Athens), complexes of glucogene phosphorylase b (E. Chrissina, National. Res. Found., Athens), multi-dimensional approach to molecular replacement (N.M. Glykos, U of Thrace, Alexandroupolis) and many more.
The conference was preceded by the 2nd Workshop of the Hellenic Crystallographic Association on the Rietveld Method, October 13-14, 2004, which took place at the Department of Physics of the University of Athens and it was organized by Drs. M. Calamiotou (Department of Physics, University of Athens); V. Perdikatsis (Department of Mineral Resources Engineering, Technical University of Crete); A. Stergiou (Department of Physics, University of Thessaliniki) and V. Psicharis (Institute of Material Sciences, NCSR Demokritos). The workshop was attended by 22 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
The association acknowledges the financial assistance of the sponsors and the chairman of IUCr for his contribution to young scientists in order to attend the workshop and the conference. The titles of all presentations of the conference, programs of the conference and workshop along with photographs from both events can be seen at the website of the association: www.hecra.gr.
The XIII Annual Symposium of the Spanish Group of Crystallography (GEC) was held in Oviedo (Asturias, Spain) from July 3 to 6, 2002, at the 'Pr?cipe Felipe' Auditorium. It was attended by 80 crystallographers coming from all over the country and included 9 plenary lectures, 10 oral presentations, 34 poster communications, a workshop, and exhibitions from three industrial companies.
The main topic of the Symposium was "New Technologies for the Characterization of Materials: Instrumentation, Detectors, and Radiation Sources", and its main goal was to show to the spanish crystallographic community the state of the art in data collection techniques such as methods based on synchrotron radiation, neutron diffraction, area detectors, etc. Plenary lectures included: SR Crystallography instrumentation from the facility and user point of view; monochromators, mirrors and detectors (John R. Helliwell, Daresbury Lab, UK), SR Bio-crystallography instrumentation, methods and application case studies; anomalous scattering, ultra-high resolution and time-resolved (John R. Helliwell), SpLine: The Spanish line for material sciences at the ESRF. Experimental capacities and timing (Germ? R. Castro, ESRF, Grenoble, France), The Spanish synchrotron of El Vall?: history, current status and opportunities for the future (Joan Bordas, LLS-UAB, Barcelona, Spain), The Spallation Neutron Source: new opportunities in material sciences (Ian Anderson, SNS Project, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, USA), and Future opportunities for Crystallography: ESS! (Flavio Carsughi, Univ. Ancona, Italy).
On the other hand, an important part of the symposium covered other topics of the structure determination process, such as crystal growth and data analysis, with lectures like High-throughput crystal growth for Molecular Biology and Medicine (Juan M. Garc?-Ruiz, IAC-CSIC, Granada, Spain), Sorption of toxic metals by precipitation of solid solutions on mineral surfaces (Manuel Prieto, Univ. Oviedo, Spain), and The WinGX Program System - Crystallography made easy (Louis J. Farrugia, Univ. Glasgow, Scotland, UK).
The meeting was sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (MCyT), the Asturian Foundation for the Research in Science and Technology (FICYT), the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry (RSEQ), the University of Oviedo, the Spanish Group of Crystallograhy Association (GEC), the Oviedo Town Hall, and the firms Bruker Nonius, Philips, and Dismed. An award for the best poster presentation was given to Dr Mois I. Aroyo (Univ. Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain) at the gala dinner, and a total of 11 young PhD students were given a grant that covered the registration fee.
More information about the symposium, including a full set of photographs, may be found at the home web page: http://www11.uniovi.es/gec/13simposio/main.html
Dr Juan Francisco Van der Maelen Urú
President of the Organizing Committee for the XIII GEC
