The American Crystallographic Association's 2012 Annual Meeting was held at the Westin Waterfront hotel in Boston, Massachusetts between July 28th and August 1st. As tradition workshops were held on Saturday, the first day of the meeting. This year the Crystallography World of Wonders (See Photo 1) returned. The workshop focused on empowering high school teachers to incorporate crystallography in their classes and was offered free of charge to high school teachers. Other workshops included the Refmac and Coot workshop for macromolecular crystallographers, Structure Refinement and Disorder Modeling with OLEX2 focused on the OLEX2 software package for small-molecule structure solution and refinement, and Modeling and Refinement of Nanoparticle Structures from Diffraction Data.
Photo 1. Participants attending the Crystallography World of Wonders Workshop build crystal structures with legos (Photo taken by Claudia Rawn).
In the evening prior to the Opening Reception, the Young Scientist Special Interest Group (YSSIG) sponsored an orientation session for students and first time attendees introducing participants to the structure of the meeting. In addition of the orientation session, Dr Eric Mazur, the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University and Area Dean of Applied Physics presented the talk “Confessions of a converted lecturer”. Sessions started in full swing on Sunday with the Buerger Award being presented to John Spence (See Photo 2) of Arizona State University for his “Theoretical and experimental contributions to diffraction physics using both X-ray and electron methods”. Sunday sessions included half-day sessions on Functional Nanomaterials and Magnetic Materials, the former being sponsored by the Small Angle Scattering Special Interest Group (SIG) and the latter co-sponsored by the Materials, Neutron, and Powder SIGs. “Emerging Sources: Theory and Practice” sponsored by the Synchrotron and Small Angle Scattering SIGs had two sessions on Sunday and continued with one on Monday. On Sunday, there was also a full day Transactions Symposium “Transformations and Structural Oddities in Molecular Crystals” in honor of Bruce M. Foxman, co-sponsored by six different SIGs! Sunday evening activities include the first of the poster sessions and the YSSIG mixer.
Photo 2. George Phillips presents the 2012 Buerger Award to John Spence (Photo taken by Peter Müller).
On Monday morning, the Warren Award was presented to Paul Fenter (See Photo 3) of Argonne National Laboratory for “developing novel in situ X-ray reflectivity and microscopy methods to image structures and processes at complex solid–liquid interfaces.” The Materials, Powder, Neutron, and Small Angle Scattering SIGs co-sponsored the full day session on Materials for a Sustainable Future. Monday concluded with the second poster session. Tuesday began with the presentation of the Margaret C. Etter Early Career Award to Emmanuel Skordalakes (See Photo 4) of the Wistar Institute for his work on determining the high-resolution crystal structures of the full-length protein component of telomerase as well as its complex bound to an RNA–DNA hybrid. In addition to the award, there was the Etter Early Career Award Symposium focusing on the work of early career scientists. Half-day session on Local Structure/Partially Ordered Systems and In Operando/In Situ/Parametric Studies were hosted during the morning and afternoon, respectively. Both were co-sponsored by the Materials, Neutron, and Powder SIGs. The third and concluding poster session was held on Tuesday evening.
Photo 3. George Phillips presents the 2012 Warren Award to Paul Fenter (Photo taken by Peter Müller).
Photo 4. Eric Montemayor presents the 2012 Etter Award to Emmanuel Skordalakes (Photo taken by Peter Müller).
This year, the final day of the ACA Annual meeting was Wednesday. The final session of the Transactions in honor of Bruce M. Foxman was held Wednesday morning. The Materials, Neutron, and Powder SIGs sponsored a half-day session on Functional and Emerging Materials and Technology in the morning and a half-day session on Phase Transitions in Inorganic Systems in the afternoon. The meeting concluded with the talk “The History of Structural Biology — Donald Caspar” delivered by the ACA President George Phillips followed by the banquet.
