15^th Bruker-Nonius CCD users group meeting 

Madison, WI, September 16-18, 2007

The annual meeting was an opportunity for the users of Bruker-Nonius equipment to discuss the latest advances in the Bruker instrumentation and software development and to share ideas and experiences. The meeting attracted 63 participants from six countries. There were 15 talks during the two morning sessions, four workshops, five poster presentations, and a tour of the Bruker-AXS facility.

The meeting opened with a tour of the chemistry department of the U. of Wisconsin-Madison and a reception dinner by Lake Mendota. The following morning Bruker-AXS experts S. Byram, M. Ruf, E. Hovestreydt and C. Campana presented a detailed overview of their latest instrumentation. After the break M. Olmstead explained how the SHELX command FRAG could be used for refining difficult structural fragments, P. Fanwick and J. Desper spoke about their laboratory practices and the participants toured the Bruker facility. Four workshop sessions led by N. Bhuvanesh, C. Campana (both on powder diffraction), P. Mueller (difficult refinements) and G. Sheldrick (TWINABS) allowed the participants to fine-tune their skills. There were poster presentations from students and a postdoc from Centro de Investigación de Estudios Avanzados (Cinvestav) in Mexico City.

On the second day G. Sheldrick led a discussion of future developments in SHELX, S. Lindeman made a strong case for using CuKα radiation, L. Falvello and B. Foxman spoke about solid state transformations, J. Reibenspies described powder diffraction applications, H. Hope illustrated a cryocrystallography set-up for use in the 5-20 K range, and G. Yap and L. Dahl delivered spirited talks on teaching X-ray crystallography.

The fruitful discussions, availability of experts, and warm atmosphere make user group meeting valuable tools for honing our crystallographic skills. The next meeting will be held in Delft, the Netherlands at the end of September 2008 (contact: Frank van Meurs).

Ilia Guzei