Symposia in Spain

The XIII Annual Symposium of the Spanish Group of Crystallography (GEC) was held in Oviedo (Asturias, Spain) July 3-6, 2002, at the 'Príncipe Felipe' Auditorium. It was attended by 80 crystallographers and included 9 plenary lectures, 10 oral presentations, 34 poster communications, a workshop, and exhibitions from three industrial companies.

The main topic was 'New Technologies for the Characterization of Materials: Instrumentation, Detectors, and Radiation Sources', and its main goal was to show to the Spanish crystallographic community the state of the art in data collection techniques such as methods based on synchrotron radiation, neutron diffraction, area detectors, etc. Plenary lectures included: SR Crystallography instrumentation from the facility and user point of view; monochromators, mirrors and detectors (J.R. Helliwell, UK), SR Bio-crystallography instrumentation, methods and application case studies; anomalous scattering, ultra-high resolution and time-resolved (J.R. Helliwell), SpLine: The Spanish line for material sciences at the ESRF. Experimental capacities and timing (G.R. Castro, France), The Spanish synchrotron of El Vallès: history, current status and opportunities for the future (J. Bordas, Spain), The Spallation Neutron Source: new opportunities in material sciences (I. Anderson, USA), and Future opportunities for Crystallography: ESS! (F. Carsughi, Italy).

The symposium also covered crystal growth, structure determination and data analysis, with lectures like High-throughput crystal growth for Molecular Biology and Medicine (J.M. García-Ruiz, Spain), Sorption of toxic metals by precipitation of solid solutions on mineral surfaces (M. Prieto, Spain), and The WinGX Program System - Crystallography made easy (L.J. Farrugia, UK).

The meeting was sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (MCyT), the Asturian Foundation for Research in Science and Technology (FICYT), the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry (RSEQ), the U. of Oviedo, the Spanish Group of Crystallograhy Association (GEC), the Oviedo Town Hall, Bruker Nonius, Philips, and Dismed. An award for the best poster presentation was given to M.I. Aroyo (Spain) at the gala dinner, and a total of 11 young PhD students were given a grant that covered the registration fee.

Participants of the XIII Annual Symposium of the Spanish Group of Crystallography in July, 2002.

Further information, including photographs, is available at www11.uniovi.es/gec/13simposio/main.html.