International Union of Crystallography

 

Early Career Scientist Division (ECSD)

The Early Career Scientist Division is a newly formed group of young scientists linking between already existing Young Scientist local associations and the IUCr.

About

The IUCr Early Career Scientist Division (ECSD) was formed in early 2025 as a new division of the IUCr. The division aims to connect and unite early career scientists and regional associations to provide an exchange of experience and knowledge, to promote collaboration and collegiality within the community.


For more information read the latest at the IUCr Newsletter.

 

Chair

 

Name: Rebecca Clulow

Position: Researcher

Current Affiliation: Uppsala University

Region: Europe (Sweden)

Research Topic: My research is centred on high entropy materials with applications for hydrogen storage, proton conduction and magnetic properties. Crystallography and diffraction are always at the core of my research where we aim to use structure-property relationships to design greener and more sustainable materials.


Co-chair

 

Name: Orbett Alexander

Position: Lecturer

Current Affiliation: University of the Western Cape

Region: Africa (South Africa)

Research Topic: Design and development of small-molecule therapeutics for biological applications, employing crystallographic techniques for structural elucidation and analysis of structure-activity relationships.


Members

 

Name: Analio Dugarte

Position: Professor

Current Affiliation: Universidad de Los Andes

Region: Latin American (Venezuela)

Research Topic: I work on the structural characterization of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) using powder and single crystal X-ray diffraction techniques. Currently, the main focus is on structure determination using powder diffraction data of these APIs.


 

Name: Alice-Roza Eruera

Position: Research Fellow

Current Affiliation: University of Otago

Region: Oceania (New Zealand)

Research Topic: My research is in the cryo-electron microscopy space with a focus on the agents of infectious diseases. Structures I've worked on extend from large macromolecular particles like bacteriophages, VLPs and glycoproteins, to small enzymes like polymerases and proteases with and without inhibitors, using both X-ray crystallography and cryo-EM.


 

Name: Ghodbane Oumaima

Position: PhD candidate

Current Affiliation: Abbes laghrour university, Khenchela, Algeria

Region: North Africa (Algeria)

Research Topic: Synthesis, characterization and applications of polymorphs Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) and organic-inorganic hybrid compounds based on nitrogen bases: Towards new materials with physicochemical properties.


 

Name: Camila Batista Pinto

Position: Post-doctoral researcher

Current Affiliation: University of São Paulo

Region: Latin America (Brazil)

Research Topic: My main topic of research is small-molecule X-ray crystallography, focusing on the study of non-covalent interactions by means of X-ray charge density studies and topological analysis.


 

Name: Elodie Tailleur

Position: Assistant professor

Current Affiliation: University of Lorraine / CRM2 laboratory

Region: Europe (France)

Research Topic: My research interests focus on the structure-properties relationships of ferroelectric molecular and/or hybrid organic-inorganic materials. For this purpose, I develop advanced crystallographic experiments, in particular in situ X-ray diffraction under electric field.


 

Name: Nichole Valdez

Position:Staff Scientist

Current Affiliation: Sandia National Laboratories

Region: North America (Mountain USA)

Research Topic: Powder and single crystal X-ray diffraction of a variety of materials as a service crystallographer.


 

Name: Zeyue Zhang

Position: PhD student

Current Affiliation: Peking University

Region: Asia (China)

Research Topic: My research interest is on the structural solution for sub-micro crystals using 3D electron diffraction and numerical characterization of dynamical effects. I am also studying the ambiguity of X-ray diffraction, which is also known as homometry.


 

Name: Kara Zielinski

Position: Graduate Student

Current Affiliation: Cornell University

Region: North America (USA)

Research Topic: : I work on methods development for time-resolved structural biology experiments, with a particular focus on crystallography and solution scattering.

Calendar of meetings

Today

NEMI Trondheim workshop. A workshop on TEM Data collection and analysis (Trondheim Norway 2nd Jun 2026 - 4th Jun 2026)
Structural characterisation of macromolecular complexes (Grenoble France 27th May 2026 - 3rd Jun 2026)

Coming up

Forthcoming meetings can be found using the calendar navigation tool or by selecting a meeting type, topic or country from the lists below.

countries

Regional Early Career Associations

American Crystallographic Association Young Scientists Special Interest Group
Region: US/Canada
Contact: Kara Zielinski
Wepage: https://www.amercrystalassn.org/scientific-interest-groups 

British Crystallographic Association Early Stage Crystallography Group
Region: UK
Contact: Thomas Hitchings 
Webpage: https://escg.crystallography.org.uk/

European Crystallographic Association - Young Crystallographers general interest group
Region: Europe
Contact: Marta Morana, Mateja Pisačić 
Webpage: https://ecanews.org/groups/gig-01-young-crystallographers

German Society for Crystallography - Young Crystallographers 
Region: Germany
Webpage: https://dgk-home.de/en/category/young-crystallographers/

Youth Committee of Chinese Crystallographic Society
Region: China
Webpage: https://www.ccrs.net.cn/ 

Regional Associations


African Crystallographic Association (AfCA) 


American Crystallographic Association (ACA) 


Asian Crystallographic Association (AsCA) 


European Crystallographic Association (ECA) 


Latin American Crystallographic Association (LACA) 



E-mail: [email protected]