Commercial exhibition hours were unusual, not opening until lunchtime but continuing through the co-located poster sessions, well into the evenings; nevertheless, the CCDC’s double-sized stand provided a focus for our interactions with so many of our friends and colleagues. This was perhaps the most rewarding aspect of the Congress. We were so busy throughout the whole meeting!
Two other major events organised by the CCDC took place at the Congress, and both were extremely well attended and supported, and generated very positive feedback. Suzanna Ward gave a lunchtime seminar expounding on some of the extremes in and presenting some of the statistics on the more than 700,000 entries currently in the CSD. An audience of around 140 enjoyed both this, and the catering provided. Pete Wood’s workshop on the Solid Form tools within the CSD System was also very popular, with over 100 attendees following several examples of their use to solve real problems in materials development. Elsewhere at the conference, CCDC’s Executive Director, Colin Groom, gave a very thought-provoking and entertaining presentation on how to extract meaning from crystallographic data.
The CCDC sponsored three poster prizes consisting of a $500 financial award and a trophy, which were announced at the Closing Ceremony and awarded to deserving young recipients from among the many hundreds of posters on display during the Congress. Congratulations are due to Chiaki Tsuboi (University of Kyoto, Japan), Doris Braun (University of Innsbruck, Austria) and Filipe Almeida Paz (University of Aveiro, Portugal). The picture shows our own Dr Pete Wood with two of the winners, Filipe not having been able to be present at the Closing Ceremony.
(Photograph: Daniel Wilson)
The Congress was, in this, the International Year of Crystallography, a great success from the CCDC’s point of view. The next Congress will be held in Hyderabad, India, in 2017 – surely an event which will have a strong local flavour and one which I am anticipating eagerly.
Steve Maginn
