HEC 16

Hipping, Austria, September 2013
www.mfpl.ac.at/research/research-networks/hec16

The 2013 Heart-of-Europe Bio-Crystallography (HEC) conference, a series begun in 1998, was organized by K. Djinovic-Carugo (Vienna, Austria) in the village of Hipping near lake Attersee.

Participants of the 16th Heart of Europe Bio-Crystallography Meeting. (Photo by Jae-Geun Song)

This year's meeting attracted 114 participants from 26 research groups. The 2013 HEC lecture on 'Intrinsically Disordered Proteins' was given by P. Tompa (Brussels, Belgium). Because some proteins do not have a defined structure in solution, or in the absence of a binding partner, it is of importance for crystallographers to learn about the current state of the art in the field of intrinsically disordered proteins. The scientific program included 35 short presentations in 6 sessions, and commercial presentations by the sponsors of the meeting. On Friday afternoon the attendees enjoyed a lovely but rainy boat ride on the Attersee.

The prize for the best student lecture was a ticket to the opening ceremony of IYCr 2014 in Paris, which was donated by the IUCr with some travel support. The winning talk, entitled 'How Pre-Crystallization Analysis Can Save Your Project', was given by J. Pisackova (Prague, Czech Republic).

M. Jaskolski gave a talk on the 15-year history of HEC Meetings. A publication of the same title, edited by Jaskolski and M. Sikorski (Warsaw, Poland), summarizes all previous meetings, including posters, programs, reminiscences of organizers and numerous photographs.

U. Mueller and M. Weiss (Berlin, Germany) will organize the next HEC Meeting, September 25-27, 2014, in Berlin.