The XVII Congress and General Assembly of the International Union of Crystallography

The Seattle Skyline including the Space Needle with Mt Rainer in the distance.

The XVII Congress and General Assembly of the International Union of Crystallography will be held in Seattle, Washington, USA, August 8-17, 1996. The Congress has the endorsement of the US National Academy of Sciences, the National Research Council and is sponsored, in part, by the American Crystallographic Association. The organizing committee is composed of R. Bryan (Chair), W. Duax, D. Duchamp, D. Eggleston, J. Flippen-Anderson, S. N. Rao, and R. Stenkamp.

The Congress will be held at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in downtown Seattle. The Center is within walking distance of the city's major hotels and is adjacent to the five-acre Freeway Park. The nearby Seattle Sheraton Hotel and Towers has been selected as the headquarters hotel for the Congress, and space has also been reserved for Congress participants at other city hotels offering a range of accommodations.

Seattle sits on a peninsula between Puget Sound, a saltwater arm of the Pacific Ocean, and the freshwater Lake Washington. It is flanked by the Cascade Mountain Range to the east and by the Olympic Mountains to the west. On clear days the 14,110 ft (4,728 m) Mount Rainier is spectacularly visible!

The major topics of the meeting will be similar to those of the Beijing meeting and will reflect the growth and development of the field and the areas of most intense activity. There will be plenary lectures, microsymposia, workshops, and poster discussion sessions. Possible innovations under consideration include poster preview sessions and lunch time lectures. The Program Committee has been expanded to insure participation by representatives of all IUCr Commissions. Because the Commissions of the Union have international representation and expertise in almost all areas of crystallography, participation by the members in planning the program should assure full and balanced coverage of all areas.

The 20 members of the Program Committee include representatives from 13 commissions and 14 countries. The list of proposed categories and topics for the 1996 Congress appear in Table 1. Suggestions for additions to or revisions of the list are invited.

The IUCr Commissions that are represented on the Program Committee, the names of the Commission Chairs, and the names of the Program Committee members representing that Commission are listed in Table 2. Suggestions for plenary lecture topics and speakers and contributions to microsymposia are welcome. All crystallographers are invited to send suggestions to appropriate program committee members, Commission chairs, or directly to the Program Chair. The names, postal, and e-mail addresses of the committee members and commission chairs are listed in Tables 3 and 4, respectively.

Ewald Medal and Award

The third Ewald Award will be presented during the opening ceremony, and the awardee(s) will present a plenary lecture at the Congress. A call for nominations will appear in a future issue of the IUCr Newsletter. Previous Ewald Medal winners were John Cowley (1987), Boris Vainstein (1990), and Norio Kato (1993).

Support for Young Scientists

Students or scientists at early stages in their careers are eligible to apply for support toward the costs of their registration and hotel accommodation. Funds for this support will be provided by the International Union of Crystallography and some corporate sponsors. Grants will be allocated on a competitive basis. Additional details concerning application procedures will appear in future issues of the IUCr Newsletter.

Sponsorship

The IUCr Congress has the sponsorship of the American Crystallographic Association. In addition, the following corporations have already made contributions or pledged support to the 1996 IUCr Congress and General Assembly: EnrafNonius, Molecular Structure Corporation, Rigaku International Corporation, Siemens Analytical X-ray Instruments, Inc., The Upjohn Corporation, and Merck Research Laboratories, Glaxo Research Inst., Smith-Kline Beecham Pharmaceuticals, Hampton Research.

Passports and Visas

The IUCr is a member of the International Council of Scientific Unions and is committed to the principle of Free Circulation of Scientists. The US National Academy of Science/National Research Council has agreed to assist the Congress organizers in assuring free circulation. Those planning to attend the Congress from countries requiring visas for entry to the USA are urged to apply for their visas as soon as possible in order that the organizing committee can provide assistance as needed to assure unencumbered attendance at the Congress by bona fide scientists.

Exhibition

The commercial exhibition will include the latest equipment for single crystal and powder data collection, computer software and hardware for data reduction, structure determination and refinement, and computer graphic modeling. Due to the explosive growth of the field of macromolecular crystallography, the exhibitors will include manufacturers and distributors of chemicals, supplies, and equipment for protein purification, peptide and protein synthesis and sequence analysis, and single crystal growth. Other exhibitors will include developers of databases and software for their use, publishers of crystallographic texts, journals, and review volumes, manufacturers of model building kits and supplies, crystallographic teaching aids, representatives of government and private funding agencies, and national resources for data collection and analysis.

Seventeen mini maps of the USA illustrates the density of the crystallographic population as it will be from August 8 to 17, 1996. The logo, designed by Ellie Adman and executed by Gloria Del Bel and Melda Tugac at the graphic design department of the Medical Foundation of Buffalo, combines translational and rotational symmetry with symbols of the US, the IUCr, and the XVII Congress.

The exhibition will be managed by a division of the American Institute of Physics. An announcement of the show and an invitation to participate will be sent to potential exhibitors. An exhibitors guide will be distributed to Congress participants. Manufacturers and distributors of equipment, materials, and supplies of interest to crystallographers may wish to contact the secretariat in Buffalo or the AIP directly to request further information and receive future mailings. The deadlines for abstract submission, meeting registration, and housing will be in early 1996. Exact dates for these deadlines will appear in future issues of the IUCr Newsletter.

For information concerning any aspect of the meeting, contact: Marcia Vair, Meeting Secretariat, ACA, P.O. Box 96, Ellicott Station, Buffalo, NY 14205-0096, USA. FAX: 716-852-4846, e-mail: acamjv%mfb@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu.

Satellite Meetings of the XVII Congress and General Assembly

Because the Congress program is to have thorough coverage of all commission topics, satellite programs will complement the Congress program, not duplicate or compete with it. Details available at press time concerning satellite meetings in the areas of Powder Diffraction, Synchrotron Radiation, and Computing are included here. Additional satellite meetings are being discussed by members of the Commissions on Neutron Scattering, Electron Diffraction, Small Molecules, Macromolecules, and High Pressure Crystallography. Further information will appear in future newsletters.

A. Powder Diffraction

The 45th Annual Denver X-ray Conference and IUCr Satellite Meeting on Powder Diffraction will take place August 3-8, 1996 in Denver, Colorado. The meeting and program will be organized by the Denver X-ray Conference Advisory Committee headed by Paul K. Predecki and John V. Gilfrich. Deane K. Smith and David E. Cox, members of the IUCr Commission on Powder Diffraction, will represent the Commission on the planning committee. Details of the technical program, including topics and chairs for special sessions, will be decided after the 1995 Denver X-ray Conference. Representatives of the Commission on Powder Diffraction are encouraged to participate in that meeting and planning sessions. The call for papers will be mailed in December of 1995, with a probable abstract deadline of April 1, 1996. The technical program will be assembled by Gilfrich, R. Jenkins, Cox, Smith, and Predecki. Other members of the Denver X-ray Conference Advisory Committee include C. S. Barrett, R. Barton, V. E. Buhrke, T. C. Huang, and R. L. Snyder. Suggestions concerning the program can be addressed to the principal organizers:

B. Synchrotron Radiation

The Synchrotron Radiation Satellite meeting, August 4-7, 1996, Argonne National Laboratory, will cover a broad range of instrumentation and research applications related to the use of synchrotron radiation in crystallography. Particular attention will focus on early results and the potential for new experiments created by the third generation synchrotron radiation sources which will be operational at the time of the meeting. Leading scientists in areas of detector development, high-pressure research, time-resolved crystallography, macromolecular crystallography, and materials science will be encouraged to give invited talks highlighting developments in their fields. The program will consist of oral presentations as well as poster sessions.

C. Computing School

The 1996 IUCr Summer Computing School at Evergreen State College Olympia, Washington, August 18-22, organized by the IUCr Commission on Computing, will focus on the latest computational techniques with emphasis on macromolecular crystallography. The format will include invited and contributed lectures and tutorial sessions. Contributions will be solicited electronically and selected for presentation on the basis of originality and perceived interest. Selected presenters will be required to submit a full paper in electronic format for inclusion in the meeting materials and published proceedings.

Tutors will be expected to lead participants through real examples. Participants should come away with enough knowledge to use the techniques effectively. Tutorial materials will be carefully reviewed beforehand. All tutorial materials should be in electronic form and will be available via the Internet to anyone interested after the meeting. Authors/presenters will be expected to demonstrate software.

The workshop is being organized by two members of the IUCr Commission on Computing:

Table 1. IUCr Congress Program Categories and Topics

Table 2. Commissions of the IUCr, Current Chairs, and Program Committee Members

Table 3. Program Committee Members

Table 4. Other Commissions Chairs