Third International SAXS excites 2023 Symposium

In April 2023, Anton Paar and the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry at Graz University of Technology successfully hosted the third edition of the SAXS excites Symposium series. More than 80 participants from over 18 countries gathered in the Austrian city of Graz – home to many key figures in the field of small-angle scattering, such as Otto Kratky, Günther Porod and Otto Glatter.

The event connected to that history and brought together an array of users from the field of SAXS, with the aim of encouraging multidisciplinary cooperation and an open exchange of experience between renowned scientists, young scientists and industry. In this unique setting, researchers with different scientific backgrounds – ranging from biology to materials science – got together, learned about their individual progress and challenges in the application of small-angle scattering, and sparked new ideas for their own experiments.

The symposium featured 21 high-level presentations from keynote speakers such as Jan Ilavsky (Argonne National Lab) on the new age of (U)SAXS applications in metallurgy, Denise Erb (Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf) on GI-SAXS observations of spontaneous nanopattern formation on crystal surfaces under extreme conditions, Stefan Salentinig (University of Fribourg) on SAXS-guided engineering of antimicrobial nanomaterials, and Cy Jeffries (EMBL Hamburg) on the significance of small-angle X-ray scattering with regard to biological materials for structure determination in the age of AlphaFold.

A poster session offered an opportunity to discuss the latest scientific findings in more detail and initiate possible future collaboration projects between the participants.

It wasn’t all work though! A short Anton Paar company tour ended with a visit to the Anton Paar Sudhaus brewery, where head brewmaster Gebhard Sauseng explained the details of the brewing process. And no brewhouse tour would be complete without the option to also sample and taste the beers fresh from the tap. From there, it was only a few steps to the conference dinner.

With this third SAXS excites Symposium, Graz University of Technology and Anton Paar – together with all the participants – again placed impressive emphasis on SAXS in a city that has a long, strong connection to the field.

Positive feedback

"The scope and quality of the scientific presentations were impressive."

"The discussed topics allow me to look beyond the horizon of my own research."

"The organization of the conference was very professional."

"The scientific meeting as well as the company tour and conference dinner were awesome!"

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Contact: Andreas Keilbach.