ISFC2010

Montevideo, Uruguay, November 2010. http://cryssmat.fq.edu.uy/ISFC2010

(From left to right) Massimo Nespolo, Mois Aroyo, Robert Burrow, Sebastián Píriz, Ernesto Estévez-Rams, Raimundo Lora-Serrano, Eduardo Granado and Leopoldo Suescun during farewell dinner.

Participants at the ISFC2010 conference in Montevideo, Uruguay.

The International School on Fundamental Crystallography (ISFC2010) was held at the Facultad de Química, Universidad de la República in Montevideo, Uruguay. The School was organized by the Crystallography, Solid State and Materials Lab. (Cryssmat-Lab)/DETEMA/Facultad de Química and the IUCr Commission on Mathematical and Theoretical Crystallography (MaThCryst) and sponsored by the IUCr, the Universidad de la República through CINQUIFIMA, CSIC and Facultad de Química, PEDECIBA and ANII from Uruguay and the ACA and ICDD that provided funds and folders for participants.

Fifty-one participants with backgrounds in chemistry, materials science, physics, structural biology and geology from Argentina (4), Brazil (25), Chile (2), Colombia (2), Mexico (2) and Uruguay (16) attended lectures by Massimo Nespolo (Nancy Université, France), Mois I. Aroyo (U. del País Vasco, España), Ernesto Estévez-Rams (U. de La Habana, Cuba), Eduardo Granado (UNICAMP, Brazil) and Gustavo Echeverría (UNLP, Argentina) on fundamental aspects of crystallography in direct and reciprocal space. All participants received some degree of support ranging from free lunch to full travel, lodging and expenses with 65% of the available funds devoted to support students.

The school was preceded by a preparatory session covering fundamental mathematics such as matrix algebra and Fourier series (led by Ricardo Faccio and Leopoldo Suescun from UR, Uruguay) and followed by a one-day workshop on representation theory of space groups led by Mois Aroyo.

The participants presented 30 posters. Six poster prizes were awarded, five consisting of a one-year complimentary membership to the ACA (Luciana Fernández Werner, Uruguay; Nicolás Ignacio Neuman, Argentina; Rodrigo Correa, Brazil; Hugo Javier Serrano Posada, Mexico; and Lorraine Andrade Malaspina, Brazil) and a special poster prize awarded to Eduardo Bittar (Brazil). The event was deemed highly useful for participants, 39 of whom replied to the on-line post-event evaluation. Many felt that their attendance at the ISFC2010 will improve their research activities and that they would recommend the next school to others.

The organizer of the next International School on Fundamental Crystallography in Latin America – ISFC2012 - will be Raimundo Lora-Serrano (U. Federal de Uberlandia, Brazil).

More information is available at the MaThCryst Commission website or the local portal for the ISFC2010 (http://cryssmat.fq.edu.uy/ISFC2010). More pictures are at http://picasaweb.google.com/isfc2010/isfc2010 and www.iucr.org/gallery/2010/fundamental-crystallography-montevideo.