2023 Meeting of the Crystallographic Society of Japan

The 2023 Annual Meeting and General Assembly of the Crystallographic Society of Japan (CrSJ2023) was held at Yamaguchi University from 27 to 29 October 2023. In total, 273 crystallographers participated in the meeting, there were 160 oral and poster presentations covering all aspects of crystallography, three award lectures and five symposia. The Young Crystallographers Meeting 2023 was also held as one of the scientific sessions. Prior to the annual meeting, a satellite workshop on powder diffraction and total scattering was held on 26 October.

The annual meeting started with the general symposium 'Expanding Crystallography into Structural Science in Drug Discovery' (organizer: Professor K. Iwasaki, Tsukuba University). More than half of the total attendees of the meeting participated in this symposium despite the diversity in the attendees' professions. Four more symposia, also determined by open proposals, were held in parallel on day 3: 'Present Status and Future Prospects of Coherent X-Ray Diffraction Imaging' (organizer: Professor M. Nakasako, Keio University), 'Harmonic Interplay between Molecular Flexibilities and Crystal Rigidities' (organizer: Dr H. Sugiyama, CROSS), 'Protein Crystallographers Look at a New World Through Cryo-Electron Microscopy' (organizer: Dr N. Muraki, Keio University) and 'Crystallography on New Material Synthesis and Process Development Using High Pressure' (organizer: Professor T. Shimada, Hokkaido University).

The general symposium on the first day.

At the CrSJ Awards Ceremony, the Nishikawa Award was presented to Professor Tetsuya Ishikawa for his research 'A New Era in Crystallography Brought About by the Realization of Ultra-bright Synchrotron Radiation Facilities: SPring-8, SACLA and Beyond'; the Research Award was presented to Professor Masahiro Fujihashi (Osaka Medical and Pharmaceutical University) for his research 'Elucidation of Enzyme Mechanism as well as Exploration and Design of New Enzymes, Based on Crystal Structures'; and the Young Crystallographer Award was presented to Professor Yuki Takayama (Tohoku University) for his research 'Development and Application of Multishot Coherent X-ray Diffraction Imaging'.

Five young scientists were honored with Student Presentation Awards based on their poster presentations on the first day: Mibuki Hayashi (University of Tsukuba) and Kazuki Hiraoka (Tohoku University) in the physics and mineralogy field, Shun Sumikawa (University of Hyogo) in the chemistry field, and Keishiro Uda (Kyusyu University) and Midori Uenaka (Osaka University) in the biology field.

The Young Crystallographers Committee organized a mini-symposium on the second day. Two invited young scientist speakers gave research presentations, and two graduate students presented their activities at IUCr2023. After the presentations, 66 participants, including young researchers and graduate students over several research fields, were separated into seven tables for group discussions. At each table, participants discussed and shared information on their research/campus life through crystallography.

Group photo at the Young Crystallographers mini-symposium.

A satellite workshop titled 'Fundamentals and Practices of New Analytical Methods in Powder Diffraction and Total Scattering' was held in collaboration with Rigaku Corporation and had 35 participants. The purpose of the workshop was to provide a program for researchers who are interested in new analytical methods but are not confident in using them because they do not understand the fundamentals well or do not know how to apply them in practice because there are no experienced researchers in their institutions. Dr Hideo Toraya, the developer of the Direct Derivation (DD) method, an innovative quantitative analysis method using powder diffraction, gave a lecture on the basics of the DD method. Dr Masatsugu Yoshimoto presented the basics of the Pair Distribution Function (PDF) method and the Reverse Monte Carlo (RMC) method for total scattering pattern analysis. As a practical version of these analysis methods, Dr Miki Kasari demonstrated the analysis of demo data using Rigaku's SmartLab Studio II software.

The chair of the organization committee was Professor A. Nakatsuka (Yamaguchi University) and the program committee was chaired by Professor K. Komatsu (University of Tokyo).

The next annual meeting will be held on 8–10 October 2024 at Nagoya University, Aichi, Japan. The organization committee chair is Professor L. Chavas (Nagoya University) and the program committee is chaired by Professor S. Aoyagi (Nagoya City University).