Author Archives: Elspeth Garman

BCA Membership Administration

Dear Member

The BCA contract with Northern Networking Events (NNE) expired on 30 March 2012, and following a tender process by the BCA Council, HG3 of Harrogate was selected to take over the Membership Administration from 30 March 2012, and the meeting organisation from 1 April 2013 (to organise the 2014 Spring Meeting). The contracts for both roles will expire at the same time, on 31 July 2018.
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Honorary Membership Nominations

This is the third (and last) time that as President I have had the very enjoyable task of inviting nominations for new Honorary Members of the BCA.

Honorary Membership is the highest membership accolade of the BCA, and is awarded to a small number of colleagues who have contributed significantly both to crystallography and to the work of the BCA.

In 2009  Bill Clegg, Venki Ramakrishnan and David Taylor became our most recent Honorary Members, taking the total number to 22.

In the coming year we anticipate electing one or two new Honorary Members.

Please send your nominations, together with a short (1 page) supporting case and the endorsement of at least 3 other BCA members to me at president@crystallography.org.uk by 31st January, 2012.

For information, a list of our 22 current Honorary Members is available at http://crystallography.org.uk/honorary-members

Best wishes
Elspeth Garman
President, British Crystallographic Association

Member get a Member Challenge!

At the BCA 2011 AGM held at the very successful Keele Spring meeting a major topic of discussion was our shrinking membership. For the sustainability of the BCA we urgently need to recruit new members and re-recruit lapsed members.

Membership of the BCA offers:

  • Reduced registration for all BCA meetings
  • Four copies of Crystallography News per year to keep up to date with news and happenings in the field
  • The opportunity to actively contribute to the development of crystallography
  • Networking opportunities
  • Eligibility for students to apply to the Arnold Beevers Bursary Fund to obtain grants for meetings.
  • Opportunity to interact and learn from scientists outside your own area of crystallography

We seek to involve our membership in promoting the benefits of being in the BCA and so we are running a competition where the member who manages to recruit the most new or lapsed members wins free registration for the European Crystallography Meeting in Warwick in 2013.  New members can now specify on their membership form who recruited them so that the recommending member can be entered into the competition. The winner will be announced at the 2012 AGM.

We ask each BCA member to approach their colleagues and contacts in any area of crystallography to consider BCA membership. If each member recruits just one new member, we could double our membership…

A further initiative is to offer an electronic version of Crystallography News to members as a pdf file instead of a paper copy.  This will assist in keeping our costs down and is also better for our planet.  If any member wishes to take up this offer please email the BCA Secretary Georgina Rosair: secretary@crystallography.org.uk

With best regards

Elspeth Garman
President

Dr. Andres Goeta

Dear Member

It is with deep sadness that I write to inform you of the untimely death of BCA Council Member Dr Andres Goeta on 29 July 2011.

Andres joined the Chemistry Department at the University of Durham in 1995 as a post doctoral researcher in crystallography and in 1998 was appointed to the new post of X-ray Service manager.  He subsequently became a Senior Research Officer and was a key figure in the department, collaborating with all staff, running the X-ray service, leading his own research group, working on innovative instrumentation projects in crystallography and lecturing to graduate and undergraduate students. He was a co-editor for Acta Crystallographica, a  co-organiser of the Durham Crystallography Schools as well as being on the BCA Council.

The funeral will take place in St Mary’s Church, Shincliffe village on Friday 5th August at 1.45pm and afterwards at the crematorium at 2.30pm. Family flowers only but donations to any cancer charity would be appreciated.

Our sympathies lie with the family at this very distressing time.
Elspeth

Professor Elspeth F. Garman,
President, British Crystallographic Association

Spring Meeting 2012: change of venue

Dear Member

I wanted to let you know that the venue for the 2012 Spring meeting will not be Loughborough University, as unfortunately they are now unable to accommodate us due to having been selected as the Olympic athletes training site.

At such short notice, we are very fortunate that Northern Networking have been able to book us in to Warwick University for the same dates with similar arrangements as for SM2010. I am happy to say that although Warwick is a more expensive venue, Loughborough have said in writing that they will be covering the difference in cost. Therefore there should be no financial implications for the BCA.

SM 2012 will be an excellent opportunity for us to have a ‘dry run’ of the venue before ECM28 in 2013.

With best wishes

Elspeth