Archive of Past CHAIRMAN'S REPORTS

• 1998 Steve Norval
• 1997 David Taylor
• 1996 David Taylor
• 1995 David Dyson
• 1994 David Dyson

CHAIRMAN'S REPORT for 1998

to the 1999 Annual General Meeting of the Industrial Group.

This is the end of my first year as Group Chairman and it has certainly been different. The fact that our AGM is being held in a Coventry hotel is evidence in itself. 1998 largely followed our standard pattern, but that does not simply mean more of the same. I fe el that one of the great successes of the IG over the last few years has been the innovation in our activities.

Our meetings in the last year included a second Special Interest Group meeting on Elevated Temperature XRD held at ICI Wilton in June and led by Dave Taylor. It was good to see discussion developing during the day and we would like these groups to develop as opportunities to learn from one another's experience. A first workshop on Residual Stress took place in September, held at t he Open University and organized by Kath Clay and Colin Small. It was a very lively meeting, attended by twenty-seven people, which began to identify a community of crystallographers interested in characterizing structural materials. We hope to see another Special Interest Group develop, probably covering several aspects of diffraction from these materials. The Autumn meeting returned to Runcorn, this time hosted by Zeneca and organized by Graham McPherson and Philip Lake. We were provided with a wi de-ranging programme and excellent presentations that deservedly attracted many compliments. Our thanks go to ICI, the Open University and Zeneca for their hospitality.

The group Newsletter has been strongly developed over the last few years by Bruce Fox, becoming an increasingly a 'good read' rather than a list of events past and future. Thanks to Dave Taylor's efforts it is now available on the Group web pages along with current and historical information, acting as a superb advertisemen t for our activities. Dave circulated the revamped web pages on floppy disk earlier in the year and we expect electronic publication to become increasingly important over the next few years. It should provide a means of inexpensively and efficiently increasing our Newsletter circulation.

The IUCr Congress is to be held at Glasgow in August this year. Because of the Congress there is no BCA Spring Meeting, so the committee decided to concentrate efforts on the two-day Industrial Crystallogra phy Forum at the Royal Court Hotel, Coventry, during which this AGM is being held. Most of the group's activities for a normal year have been fitted in. Eighty-five people have registered and been rewarded by high standards of science and presentation. The concept has been to mix specialist and more general sessions including formal presentations and workshop discussions in comfortable surroundings. The committee will certainly want to consider how best to build on the successes and we are anxious t o hear your opinions. Thanks go to all the many people who have helped put this meeting together. Jo Jutson, who put enormous effort into the Hotel arrangements and finances, deserves very special thanks, as does Dave Taylor who looked after the other aspects of administration.

Our commercial sponsors are very important to us. We are indebted to Bruker-AXS, ICDD, Microsource - Bede, Oxford Cryosystems and Philips Analytical for their contributions to the Forum. We also remember with thanks the generous contributions that have been made during the year to sponsor the other meetings and publication of the Newsletter.

We have a committee of very busy people who generously give their time and have contributed enormously to the Group's ongoing success. It is a great privilege to work with them. This year, three of the committee are retiring. Keith Rogers completes his three years as a highly valued academic member. Jamshed Anwar has been with us for six years as an academic membe r and subsequently in the role of ICDD representative. Bruce Fox has been a committee member for three years and Vice Chairman for the last year. We will greatly miss them all and thank them for their labours.

Finally, thank you all for continuing to support the group's activities. Many of those attending represent whole industries that would barely have had a look in at our meetings a few years ago. It is encouraging that there is another generation of crystallographers to pick up a few w rinkles on the old tricks and teach us some new ones. It is not yet clear if the Group will hold another meeting during 1999, but we look forward to seeing you an Herriott Watt University for the Spring Meeting 2000.

Steve Norval
April 1999

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CHAIRMAN'S REPORT for 1997

to the 1998 Annual General Meeting of the Industrial Group.

I have enjoyed my term as chairman. I have now retired from Pilkington and my decision to retire a year early as your chairman will allow me to pursue other activities, and my successor time to get his feet under the table before the IUCR meeting in Glasgow next year. However, I am planning to stay active in the x-ray analysis field, so you haven't seen the last of me yet. The Group membership scheme, whereby attending an Industrial Group meeting (ex cluding spring meeting) qualifies for BCA membership or renewal, continues to provide new members and many Industrialists are now using the scheme to renew their membership. The three qualifying meetings in the past year resulted in 21 new BCA members and 62 membership renewals and there are already over 20 renewals pending for 1999.

Our meeting programme for the last year followed on from the well received programme of events at the Leeds Spring meeting where we welcomed Kath Clay, Mary Vi ckers and Philip Lake to the committee. In June I arranged a meeting at Pilkington on diffraction at Elevated temperature. Considering the specialist nature of the topic it was well attended (34) and following a favourable response will become our second Special Interest Group (SIG) with the next meeting on 4 June 1998 at ICI Wilton. I thank Pilkington for providing lunch and Philips who supplied the wine to accompany the buffet. The Autumn meeting at Cranfield on Industrial Crystallography was well attended (41). I thank the Royal Military College for their hospitality and Keith Rogers for the local arrangements and putting together a programme of interest to all. We even tried out a new idea of finding solutions to problems submitted by the audience in open debate. It went well and created some interesting discussion and answers for the varied problems put forward. In fact the BCA President was so taken with the idea it is being tried out on a wider audience at the Spring meeting. The third meeting of the Pharmaceutical SIG took place on 18 March 1998 at Roche Discovery, Welwyn. I was able to attend a well-organised meeting with an excellent technical programme. Thanks go to Philip Lake and Jamshed Anwar for the technical programme and Chris Frampton and Roche for provision of lunch and the local arrangements. It was well received and a high attendance (68) was maintained showing that the momentum of SIG's is sustainable.

Steve Norval has represented the BCA at two meetings of a group involved in a European Initiative on Powder Diffraction Standardisation. He is keeping members informed of progress in this important area through Crystallography News, our own Newsletter and presentations at technical meetings. A set of draft documents is currently under review in the UK by a team of interested parties. It is important that members understand the importance of developments in this area, as it will affect our operating procedures.

Two editions of the Industrial Gr oup Newsletter have been produced and the quality is improving issue by issue thanks to the efforts of our editor Bruce Fox. We are obliged to send a copy to all BCA members who tick our group as a main or special interest on the membership form (currently 185 members). Our efforts continue to get a copy onto the desk of every active industrial diffraction user in the country and are continually reviewing a circulation list of over 450. Thanks to all who contributed to the content, keeping members i nformed of our activities is essential to the future of the group. The printing and dispatch of the August 97 and January 98 Newsletters has been handled and funded by Pilkington and Raychem respectively to whom we are indebted.

There were no nominations for an Industrial Group Award this year. We have introduced an Industrial Group logo with Ron Pflaumer submitting the winning entry in a design competition. I hope you like the new design and that it will help to quickly identify Ind ustrial Group material. An Instrument Sensitivity Round Robin exercise in conjunction with ICDD has been completed with over 30 UK participants. A report has been issued and a valuable resource on instrument sensitivity has been generated. It is now available on the BCA web pages as a set of self-test files. I have been invited to present the results at the Denver Conference in a workshop covering the tests world-wide.

This year sees a number of changes to our committee; Tim Hyde has served his three years, a vacancy was held over from last year and of course my retirement. Tim has been involved in many of our activities and we have lots of meeting reports to thank him for. Perhaps his hardest task has resulted in the excellent Hardware and Software Session we have just enjoyed. The other activities here at St Andrews were a workshop on Data Quality - Fit for the purpose organised by Mary Vickers and the second Alun Bowen Industrial Lecture given by Bob Snyder. The BCA are not holding a Spring Meeting next year because of the IUCR meeting in Glasgow. However, the Industrial Group has decided to have a meeting spanning two days in the spring of next year incorporating the Industrial Group AGM, the Alun Bowen Lecture, a general interest session and individual SIG meetings.

The support given to the Group by commercial suppliers is acknowledged, especially to Bruker AXS for their support towards the cost of the Autumn and Pharmaceutical meetings, Philips for support towards the cost of the Elevated Temperature workshop and the Pharmaceutical meeting. I thank our hosts for their hospitality in support of meetings at Pilkington - Lathom, Cranfield University - Swindon and Roche Discovery - Welwyn. Also, all the speakers who have put so much effort into making the years technical programme so interesting and rewarding.

I thank all the committee members who have helped make my spell as your Chairman an enjoyable and rewarding experience. Their efforts behind the scenes underpin all our activities and are reflected in the quality of the technical programmes that we have been able to present. It is a team effort and the astute will have noticed that all bar one of your committee have already been mentioned in this report for the part that they have played in our activities this year. I said last year that following Eric Kelly as our Secretary Treasurer would be a difficult task, but Jo Jutson has taken on the responsibility, efficiently fulfilling the demandi ng role and still finding time to present a talk alongside Kath Clay at the Autumn meeting.

Finally I thank all the members who have supported our activities during my two years chairmanship. It extends to 161 individual members and a special thanks to the two who attended all six meetings! I leave the group in the capable hands of a well balanced, hard working committee and I'm sure that with your support the Industrial Group will continue to flourish.

David Tayl or
April 1998

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CHAIRMAN'S REPORT for 1996

to the 1997 Annual General Meeting of the Industrial Group.

I have enjoyed my first year as chairman largely as a result of the efforts of our past chairman David Dyson whose planning and foresight had left the Group well prepared for the future. I thank Davi d for his contribution to the Industrial Group over his period of office. We were all saddened by the deaths of Industrial Group Award recipients Alun Bowen and Peter Salt. Both contributed to our knowledge of diffraction and will be missed by the diffraction community.

The Group membership scheme, whereby attending an Industrial Group meeting (excluding spring meeting) qualifies for BCA membership or renewal, continues to provide new members and many Industrialists are now using the scheme to renew their membership. It has now been established that the effort involved in running the scheme is worthwhile and that it should continue.

Our meeting programme for the last year followed on from the well received programme of events at the Cambridge Spring meeting. In September Bruce Fox arranged and organised a meeting at Raychem on Reflectivity. It was the first time the group has covered this new and very specialised topic, consequently the low attendance of 20 was expected. How ever, much was learned by the few industrial practitioners present and we intend to look to a wider European audience for future meetings on this topic.

The Autumn meeting on Industrial Crystallography was well attended and I thank Jo Jutson for arranging a programme of interest to all, which included an optional visit to the ISIS facility. Our hosts for the meeting were AEA Technology and thanks go to Frank Cullen for the local arrangements at Harwell.

Two Industrial Group awards were made at the Autumn meeting. The first to Brian Bellamy in recognition of his contribution to diffraction over his many years service at Harwell. The second was to Alun Bowen in recognition of his work on residual stress. Sadly, although Alun knew of the award, he died before it could be presented. It was accepted on his behalf by his widow Chris Bowen who was accompanied by her daughter Clare. The award was presented by Brian Bellamy who gave a fitting tribute to Aluns contribution to Industri al Crystallography and the BCA over many years.

We have introduced a new approach to the organisation of meetings on specialist interest topics by developing Special Interest Groups (SIG). The first SIG has been established to cover the interests of the Pharmaceutical industry with Philip Lake and Jamshed Anwar given the responsibility of organising an annual meeting of the group. The first meeting under the Industrial Group SIG banner took place on 17 March 1997 at Glaxo Wellcome Stevanag e. It was well received and attendance (68) was high. Steve Norval has been given the remit to examine the potential to develop other Special Interest Groups. It is hoped to develop these on the back of future themed one day meetings and the viability of a Non Ambient Group will be gauged at the meeting planned for 4 June 1997. Steve has been nominated to represent the Group on a European Initiative on Powder Diffraction Standardisation and will keep members informed of progress in this important ar ea.

The Leeds spring meeting has two Industrial Group sessions and a workshop. Our plenary has been renamed the - Alun Bowen Industrial Lecture- as a lasting tribute to Aluns contribution to Industrial Crystallography and the first lecture by Prof. Paul Barnes has set a high standard for others to follow.

A session titled Diffraction Plus... Simultaneous Methods has been organised by Craig Adam. It explores the possibilities of using additional analytical techniques alongside diffr action measurements. A session on Process & Production Applications of Diffraction, organised by Steve Norval, looks at the role of diffraction in the support of manufacturing processes. A special effort to encourage posters was rewarded by nine posters being submitted to the Industrial section, a big increase over the last few years. The workshop sees the culmination of the Round Robin exercise with Ron Jenkins resolving all our Instrument sensitivity problems. The Round Robin exercise has prov ed a useful test of instrument performance for 33 instruments in the UK and has set a benchmark against which any instrument can be gauged. Keeping our members informed has been achieved by two editions of the Industrial Group Newsletter edited by Bruce Fox and our efforts continue to get a copy onto the desk of every industrial diffraction user in the country with a circulation of over 400.

This year sees a large number of changes to our committee with Colin Small, Derek Hart, Craig Adam, Bruce Fox and Eric Kelly all retiring after serving their term of office. They have all given freely of their time in support of our activities and have all been responsible for arranging at least one of our meetings and speaking at others, I thank them all. Perhaps Eric should be singled out for special praise. The office of Secretary Treasurer is a demanding one which he has carried it on into his retirement from EA Technology. Oiling the wheels of our organisation has been a very worthwhile reti rement hobby. However, I am sure that their replacements will provide new impetus to the Groups activities. Action has been taken in an attempt to give a more even spread of committee retirements. A committee vacancy will be held for one year and a nominated committee member has agreed to serve a two year term. The vacancy will be filled by the co-option of Bruce Fox who will continue to edit our Newsletter and co-ordinate our WWW pages.

The support given to the Group by commercial supplier s is acknowledged, especially to MSI for their sponsorship of £400 towards the cost of Pharmaceutical meeting. I thank our hosts for their hospitality in support of meetings at Raychem - Swindon, AEA Technology - Harwell and Glaxo Wellcome - Stevenage. Also, all the speakers who have put so much effort into making the years activities so interesting and rewarding.

I look forward to next years programme and I'm sure that with your support the Industrial Group will continue to flourish

David Taylor

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CHAIRMAN'S REPORT for 1995

to the 1996 Annual General Meeting of the Industrial Group.

This year has seen a consolidation of the changes we started to introduce the previous year. We have combined introductory aspects of crystallography with its applications in industrial and academic research environments. It is pleasing to be able to report that, whilst the support may not be that seen a decade ago, our numbers have remained constant, particularly at our one day meetings. The success of our programme of events has been largely due to the teamwork of the committee members, helped by the personnel at the host meeting sites together with the equipment manufacturers. All this help is acknowledged gratefully.

Our year started with two excellently organised sessions (by Steve Norval, Craig Adam and Jo Jut son) at Cardiff which covered Novel Materials and Rietveld Analysis in Industry. This was supported by a course run by Ron Jenkins (ICDD) who introduced our newer members to the problems of data collection and search/match methods for phase identification. Ron also delivered a very interesting Plenary Lecture on the work of ICDD with particular reference to the new search/match techniques. The first part of a seminar on Quantitative Methods of Analysis was held at Sir William Siemens House, Manchest er in June. The papers presented were published in a booklet, a first for the Group, and so provide a record of the proceedings and a useful source of advice and reference material for the newcomer and experienced user alike. Our thanks go to Siemens' staff for arranging the publication. The Autumn Meeting was held at British Steel, Rotherham and sponsored by Rigaku. The meeting was organised by Steve Norval and covered the analysis of small amounts of sample: the review of different approaches to t he problems proved rewarding. The second part of the Quantitative Methods seminar was held in February at the Philips Research Laboratories at Redhill, Surrey. The seven papers drew on the information presented in part one and consolidated the information. Again we thank the hosts for their help and their offer to arrange publishing of the papers presented.

Our final meeting has been the current Spring Meeting where our sessions have covered Structure and Data (organised by Dave Taylor) an d Preferred Orientation (Colin Small). The first of these sessions complemented the short course on Essential Crystallography for Industrial Powder Diffraction Users that we have run during the Spring Meeting . Much work has gone into this course and our thanks go to Jeremy Cockroft of Birkbeck College for preparing and teaching the course and to Dave Taylor for his part in organising the course.

We are always thinking about further topics for our meetings and hope to arrange sessions on ph armaceuticals and on residual stress measurements in the near future.

We have made an Industrial Group Award to Peter Salt in recognition of his contribution to crystallography, particularly in the field of clay minerals analysis. His work is recognised internationally and the award has been a popular one. Peter has retired now and we wish him well.

We have introduced a new scheme to attract more industrial users of XRD into membership of the BCA. The changes are aimed at attracti ng new users and maintaining their interest in the IG activities. This has been a success so far and sixty-one members have joined or renewed their BCA membership through attendance at our meetings.

It is of interest that authors are becoming more conscious of the accuracy, precision and errors of their results. Many are concerned with these aspects and it has been said that measurements with an associated expression of uncertainty are incomplete. Inevitably, this has cropped up at our meet ings and it is good to see that it is being taken seriously - even thought we do not seem to have an internationally recognised standard. One way to check quality of results is by round robin samples. Such an exercise, using the NIST SRM1976 alumina plate standard, was launched at our 1995 Autumn Meeting. Several UK participants have already generated results for this survey.

Co-ordination of many of these activities has involved a considerable amount of time and our thanks go to Eric Kelly for the effort he has freely given.

Keeping our members informed has been of prime importance to us as the changes have been introduced. Our Newsletter proved an effective way of doing this. There have been two issues this year: the quality and contents are a tribute to those concerned with editing it. One of these - Trevor Carter - retires from the Committee this year and I would like to thank him for his efforts while on the Committee, at the same time wishing his successor, Bruce Fox, every good fortune.

This is my last report as Chairman as I too retire - with some misgivings but happy in the knowledge that those remaining are keen and that their efforts will ensure that the Industrial Group continues to flourish and serve the industrial community. To all who have supported me during my term of office, and to all who have contributed to our success - thanks.
D J Dyson.

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CHAIRMAN'S REPORT for 1994

to the 1995 Annual General Meeting of the Industrial Group.

Committee changes in April 1994 saw a number of new faces joining the Committee for the first time. The present Committee has tried to maintain the remit of the Group in furthering the introduction and practical application of crystallographic concepts and techniques in an industrial context.

In my opinion, the Group has achieved this succe ssfully. In saying this I must mention the efforts of Eric Kelly who, having retired early from a long career in xrd, has been able to devote the time and effort needed to represent the Group and do the secretarial and treasurer's duties. In no way does this reflect on the previous occupant of the post, Steve Norval, who still brings his knowledge to the Committee.

We have tried to achieve two things this year. Firstly to ensure that we attract members and provide them with the necessary b ackground knowledge to operate their equipment. We consider this necessary because, often, the xrd analyst in an industrial laboratory is not a crystallographer by training. To this end, we have held a course in Reitveld Analysis (At King's College London, organised by Jamshed Anwar) and shown where public domain software can be obtained with a one-day meeting. (At Daresbury, organised by your chairman.) The future will see a two part course on Quantitative Analysis.

Secondly, we have tried to keep our members up to date with what is happening in Industrial Crystallography laboratories around the country. We have held an Autumn Meeting on problems and solutions, which was organised in Swindon by Derrick Hart and Bruce Fox. Two Sessions have been held at the current conference: one on Applications of Reitveld techniques (A follow-up of the course, but organised here by Craig Adam) and one on Novel Materials, organised by Jo Jutson. In addition we have provided the advanced course on th e ICDD file, given again by our old friend Ron Jenkins. The course was organised by David Taylor. Only two Industrial posters have been submitted for the Spring Meeting: the Committee has agreed that no poster prize be awarded this year. The comments received about the programme have been very favourable and the attendance at the sessions encouraging.

All of this has been supplemented by two issues of the Group's Newsletter, prepared and edited by Trevor Carter.

An Award has been made to Ian Ferguson, recognising his contribution to our science and further nominations have appeared.

While the numbers of practising industrial crystallographers at the annual BCA Spring Meeting remain low, it is nice to see a steady forty to fifty people attending our other meetings, often with new faces among them. These meetings are often sponsored by our friends the manufacturers of our equipment and I would like to thank all of them for their continuing support, time and effort in whatever form that they have freely given it. Thanks are due, too, to our hosts at Raychem, Daresbury, BICC and King's College London.

Finally, I am greatly indebted to all Committee members for their continuing support and all their efforts. I believe that we have a Group that is continuing to flourish.