ESC4 – Warsaw 2-7 July 2017

Dear ECA crystallographers,

The new year starts with an excellent news: registration for the 4th European crystallographic School is open.

http://ecs4.ecanews.org/

As all of you know, the European Crystallographic Association promotes training and education of the next generation of crystallographers by organizing a European School every year, on basic and advanced themes, addressed to PhD students and young researchers. The success of the previous schools (Pavia, Oviedo and Bol) clearly shows that a network of young enthusiastic people is joining our community. The next School, ECS4 will be held in Poland, in 2 – 7 July 2017.

I would like to invite you to read the invitation message from the organizers of ECS4, attached to this mail, and to suggest to your students and young colleagues to consider taking part in this school.

Please feel free to spread the information.

I wish all of you a joyful and fruitful 2017.

Best regards
Alessia Bacchi

………………………………………..

Prof. Alessia Bacchi

President of the European Crystallographic Association Dipartimento di Chimica University of Parma Viale delle Scienze, 17A – Campus, I-43124 Parma, Italy Tel. +39 0521 905421 Fax +39 0521 905557 e-mail alessia.bacchi@unipr.it

http://www.unipr.it/ugov/person/21095

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Message from Janusz Lipkowski, ECS4 organiser

Crystallography in the XXIst century is the key-partner for chemists. It makes possible determination of the structure of newly synthesized materials within very short time, minutes to hours only. It provides deep insight into the structure of chemical compounds, into electron distribution at chemical bonds and/or within intermolecular spaces. It enables studies of molecular dynamics in solids and following molecular mechanism of structure transformations.

Practical importance of modern crystallography is immense and extends from material science to applications in biological systems of high complexity like protein complexes and viruses.

All this, and much more, is the characteristic of modern crystallography and is, in general, well known by crystallographers. Chemists, however, typically do not keep up to novel and rapid developments of crystallographic power. To improve this situation is one of the goals of the 4th European School of Crystallography. We intend to teach chemists how to make efficient use of diffraction methods in their laboratory life even without going through extended specialization courses. And how to efficiently use of the data openly available in computer databases containing almost a million of structures deposited now (and growing with accelerating speed).

We cordially invite crystallographers to attend the ECS4 Summer School and receive an update of their knowledge and capacities in crystallography. And, in particular, we invite chemists to attend the School and get acquainted with modern possibilities of crystallography.

We promise you will be able to perform great structural tasks after having learned basics and getting (free) software for solving, displaying and understanding the structures. The speakers to the School are the first rate scientists in the field, experienced in teaching both basic and modern aspects of crystallography.

And, last but not least, you will be very welcome to visit Poland’s capital city during Summer time, when weather is typically nice. You will meet friendly people here and may experience tradition and history of Warsaw. You will love it, the conference venue is just in the heart of historical part of Warsaw, a few steps from the main campus of Warsaw University and in the Staszic Palace – the seat of Polish Academy of Sciences and Warsaw Learned Society, the coorganizers of the School. The Conference hall has a view of the Royal Road going to the Old Town of Warsaw, located at a 10 minutes walk distance. There are numerous restaurants, bars and café’s around the venue where one may enjoy Polish or international kitchen and drinks.

Take the right decision, join us at ECS4 next July!

Janusz Lipkowski
Chair of the Scientific Committee
Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University, Warsaw, Poland