73rd Annual Meeting of the ACA: The Structural Science Society (ACA2023)

The 73rd Annual Meeting of the American Crystallographic Association: The Structural Science Society was held in Baltimore, MD, USA, on the traditional ancestral lands of the Piscataway and the Susquehannock tribes. At both the opening and the closing of the meeting, we respectfully acknowledged and honored all indigenous communities – past, present and future.

The scientific program spanned 8–11 July 2023, with associated workshops on 7 July. The program consisted of 47 daytime scientific sessions, 2 evening sessions, 3 poster sessions, 5 workshops and a 3-minute thesis competition. In contrast to ACA2022, this meeting was offered entirely in-person. The meeting was well-attended, with over 500 registrants and over 160 workshop participants.

The scientific program opened with a keynote address from Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, whose lecture 'My Adventures in the Ribosome' was a wide-ranging overview of his personal and professional journey, culminating in unraveling the ribosome’s structure, and concluding by relaying how newer structural methods such as cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM) are enabling us to tackle ever-harder structural problems. Expanding on that theme, the Transactions Symposium was entitled 'From Atoms to Cells – Electron Microscopy for Structure Solution'. The subsequent 3 days continued with 6 parallel tracks of scientific sessions as well as 3 poster sessions.

Other highlights of the meeting were the sessions on machine learning, AI and related subjects that are very topical to our profession. As well, the evening 'Would you publish this?' session featured both small-molecule and macromolecular entries, filled the venue and proved one of the most convivial of the week.

This year’s program continued to demonstrate the relevance of our new name, ACA: The Structural Science Society. We saw many talks covering structural techniques outside of traditional crystallography, such as BioSAXS and SANS, and multi-modal experiments. Sessions on cryoEM and related techniques such as cryo-electron tomography (cryoET) and microcrystal electron diffraction (MicroED) were also prominent, being featured in the Transactions Symposium as well as 5 other sessions.

Details on this and future meetings can be found here. More information can be found on our social media accounts on X and Instagram @ACAxtal, Facebook @AmerCrystalAssn or LinkedIn. In anticipation of an in-person meeting for 2024, please mark your calendars to join us on 7–11 July 2024 in Denver, CO!