Crystallographic Computing School

Crystallographic Computing School, Oviedo, Spain – 15th to 21st August 2011

Registration extended until 31st July 2011.

The IUCr Commission on Crystallographic Computing (“CompComm”) will be holding a Computing School immediately before the Madrid IUCr General Assembly and Congress this August that is intended to expose younger members of the Crystallographic community to the knowledge and experience of senior developers across the whole science. The speakers will concentrate on their own specialities (e.g. powder diffraction, small-molecule crystallography, protein crystallography), but will offer food for thought for all.

The School has a packed timetable of lectures and tutorials, and follows in the tradition of earlier Schools held before IUCr XX (Florence, 2005) and IUCr XXI (Osaka, 2008). There will be plenty of time for informal discussions with the lecturers and tutors and opportunities to explore the local Asturian hospitality!

The School is intended for prospective (or current…) developers, not to help those people who just want to run the programs better. Registration is open to all, but priority will be given to postgrads and postdocs.

The registration website is -
http://www.iucr.org/resources/commissions/crystallographic-computing/schools/mieres2011

Dr Harry Powell
Chairman ECA SIG9 (Crystallographic Computing)
Acting Chairman IUCr Commission on Crystallographic Computing

BSG prize

Ivo Tews

The Biological Structures Group awarded Ivo Tews with the BSG prize at the BCA Spring Meeting 2011.

YC Prizes

Oliver Zeldin

The Young Crystallographers Group awarded three prizes at the BCA Spring Meeting. The prize for best talk during the YC session was awarded to Oliver Zeldin (Oxford); the Cruickshank Prize for outstanding contributions crystallography and to the Spring Meeting was awarded to Claire Murray (Reading) and the YC Poster prize went to Lynne Thomas (Bath).

Claire Murray

Lynne Thomas

PCG Prizes

The Physical Crystallography Group awarded two prizes at the BCA Spring Meeting 2011:

Stewart Bland

Jonathan Coome



The PCG Panalytical Thesis Prize was awarded to Steward Bland (Elsevier) and the PCG Poster Prize was awarded to Jonathan Coome (Durham)

Special Symposium Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the PDB

In October 2011, the Worldwide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB) will host a scientific symposium celebrating the 40th anniversary of the inception of the PDB, and the many scientific contributions it archives.

The program will showcase the scientific impact made by structural biology during the past 40 years with a distinguished panel of scientists who have been instrumental in the development of the PDB and structural biology.

The meeting will begin with an evening reception and plenary session on Friday, and conclude with lunch on Sunday. For details, please see the meeting website at http://meetings.cshl.edu/meetings/pdb40.shtml.

October 28-30, 2011
Symposium Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Protein Data Bank
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY

CCDC now accepts structure factors

The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) is pleased to announce that structure factors are now being accepted with CIFs for deposition to the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD).

Colin Groom, Executive Director, commented that “The CCDC supports the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) in highlighting the importance of retaining and validating experimental data.  We strongly recommend that all journals publishing crystal structures should encourage their authors to provide these data in electronic CIF format.”

“The deposition of structure factors to the CSD is extremely welcome and will greatly facilitate the work of reviewers” said Sylvain Bernès, co-editor Acta Crystallographica Section E. “Archived structure factors also promise to be a rich source of data for research related to statistical bias in x-ray structures and in detection of systematic errors in data collections”.

CIFs and structure factors can now be deposited with the CCDC via a web-based deposition form at: http://www.ccdc.cam.ac.uk/services/structure_deposit

Further information on publication standards can be found on the IUCr website: http://www.iucr.org/index.html/leading-article/2011/2011-06-02

CCG Prizes

Jasper Adamson

The Chemical Crystllography Group awarded three poster prizes at the 2011 BCA Spring Meeting. Jasper Adamson (Oxford), won the IUCr poster prize. Elena Marelli (Reading) was awarded the CrystEngComm poster prize and Marc Shmidtmann (Liverpool) was presented with the CCG poster prize.

Elena Marelli

Marc Schmidtmann

Int. Tab. Satellite workshop to the XXII IUCr congress

Online Edition of International Tables for Crystallography: Current State and
Future Developments

Bilbao, 31 August – 3 September 2011

The workshop will provide an introduction to the current state
and future developments of the online version of International Tables for
Crystallography, including in particular the new symmetry database. This new
web server provides access to databases of symmetry information on
crystallographic groups in standard and alternative settings, allowing the
study of their group-subgroup relations, including subgroups and
supergroups, coset decompositions and the splitting of Wyckoff positions.
Applications relevant to specific topics in solid-state physics and
chemistry, such as magnetic symmetry, phase transitions and relations
between crystal structures, will form an important part of the workshop.

The maximum number of participants in the workshop is limited to 60.
Financial support is available for grant applications and the deadline for
applications is May 15, 2011.
Depending on the available funds, retired scientists will be offered special
fees.
Registration and additional information: http://www.cryst.ehu.es/ITschool

CCDC Chemical Crystallography Prize for Younger Scientists 2011

The CCDC Chemical Crystallography Prize for Younger Scientists 2011 has been awarded to Dr Pete Wood of CCDC.

Pete received his PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 2008, and has since been employed as a Research & Applications Scientist at CCDC. His research to date has focussed on quantitative understanding of the factors that govern intermolecular interactions and the assembly of crystal structures. He is also involved in the scientific development of the CCDC’s MERCURY program.

Examples of the work for which the prize is awarded are:

The prize will be awarded on Wednesday 13 April, during the BCA Spring Meeting.

Previous Meetings: BCA Spring Meeting 2010

Details of the 2010 BCA Spring Meeting programme are included in the March 2010 edition of Crystallography News and contributed summaries of the sessions are included in the June 2010 edition.