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:
·(MS1) General crystallography
·(MS2) Advanced functional properties of crystal engineered molecular structures
·(MS3) Crystallography in molecular medicine
·(MS4) Molecular interactions
·(MS5) Crystal growth in earth and material sciences
·(MS6) Dreams and nightmares of the electron crystallographers
·(MS7) Synchrotron and neutron sources and instrumentation
·(MS8) Computational crystallography
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.