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A new IUCr commission on XAFS

[Molenbroek]Alfons Molenbroek, Chair of the Commission on XAFS
The new “Commission on XAFS” was officially endorsed by the General Assembly at the IUCr2005 Florence Congress. The members of the Commission for the next triennium are Kiyotaka Asakura (Japan), Isabella Ascone (Italy and France), Federico Boscherini (Italy), Maria-Ondina Figueiredo (Portugal), Britt Hedman (USA), Elisabeth Holub-Krappe (Germany), Joaquin Garcia-Ruiz (Spain), Alain Michalowicz (France) and Alfons Molenbroek (Denmark, chair). Samar Hasnain continued as a consultant for the Commission.

The main goal for the Commission will be to promote XAFS in the crystallographic community. At the Florence Congress, a successful microsymposium on “Combined XAS and XRD techniques in physics, chemistry and material science” was organized by Settimio Mobilio and Joaquin Garcia-Ruiz.

A website (www.iucr.org/iucr-top/iucr/cxafs.html) has been developed and contacts with the International XAFS Society (IXS) are being strengthened. Some of the members of this Commission also sit on other commissions and they are eager to improve relations for the benefit of both the XAFS and the crystallographic communities. The Commission might be involved in the support of workshops and summer schools.

Some Commission members met again at the 13th Int’l Conference on X-Ray Absorption Fine Structure (XAFS-XIII) held at the Stanford (www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/xafs13) on July 9-14, 2006. The third BioXAS Study Weekend was held at the new synchrotron radiation center SOLEIL, in France, close to Paris (www.synchrotron-soleil.fr) on August 10-12, 2007 as a satellite meeting of the 9th International Conference on Biology and Synchrotron Radiation (BSR2007).

Future activities might include (re-)addressing the tough parts of XAFS (definitions, data collection and analysis procedures).

Alfons Molenbroek and Isabella Ascone