Engaging with the Crystallographic Community: Reflections on My First BCA Spring Meeting

I came to know about the BCA almost serendipitously when I was trying to get in touch with one of our in-house diffraction experts and received an automatic response informing me that he was attending the 2024 BCA Spring Meeting. At that time it was too late and I had missed the opportunity to attend the meeting. Regrettably, as is often the case with us in academia, I missed the registration deadline again for the 2025 meeting! Still persistent in my desire to join the conference this year, I sent an email to the organisers asking if I could still register for the conference and at least present a research poster. Thankfully, I received an encouraging response and was able to register for attending and presenting a poster at the conference. My enthusiasm received an additional boost when Dr Struan Simpson, who was due to chair the session on phase transitions, offered me the opportunity to deliver a research talk due to a last-minute cancellation. Better late than never - I had managed to secure an opportunity to present a poster as well as a talk at the BCA 2025!

To make up for the lost opportunity from 2024, I also registered to attend the Early Stage Crystallographers Group (ESCG) satellite meeting, usually held one day prior to the start of the main conference. The three sessions of the ESCG meeting had the perfect mix of talks on diverse topics - crystallography research being done at universities as well as large-scale facilities, development of new functional materials, as well as fundamental areas that will be the focus of future development. I was amazed by the quality of talks delivered by young researchers who had just started their careers and their enthusiasm in collaboration with other researchers, evidenced through active interactions during Q&A sessions and breaks between talks.

In the main meeting, apart from the plenary and prized talks, presentations were categorised into physical, biological and chemical crystallography groups, giving equal opportunities for researchers to represent and engage with all major fields of crystallography. A crucial characteristic of the conference was the presence of numerous UK experts in crystallography, not just as speakers but also as the session chairs and attendees. This reflected the sincerity of the crystallography community in the UK to foster exchange of ideas and develop interdisciplinary collaborations.

As a Faraday Institute Postdoctoral Research Associate (PDRA), I work on the characterisation of positive electrode (cathode) materials, particularly their crystal structures, both for long and short range ordering. I started my research career as a solid-state chemist, focusing on material synthetic approaches for tuning structure to achieve desired properties. In my current role, I extensively use synchrotron X-ray diffraction, X-ray absorption spectroscopy, neutron diffraction and solid-state NMR to evaluate battery materials – both in the pristine as well as the cycled states. I have also been investigating coating-cathode interactions in high pressure sintered thin film stacks, developed through a layer-by-layer approach. While investigating lithium-rich coating materials for cathodes, I identified new compositions with unsolved crystal structures. I presented a poster on this topic titled ‘Structural characterisation of new Li-rich d⁰ metal containing phases via combined diffraction, EXAFS and NMR spectroscopy’ at the BCA. During the poster session, I had insightful and productive discussion on my presented work with fellow attendees. I am extremely happy to have received the IUCr poster prize for this presentation. I am thankful to the BCA for having given me this opportunity, and to the IUCr for sponsoring the prize. During the poster session I also got the opportunity to interact with other poster presenters, notably with Dr Rebecca Scatena (from the I16 beamline, Diamond Light Source). Dr Scatena and I spoke in length about the characterisation of magnetic scattering - an area in which I have recently developed a deep interest.

Among all the excellent talks, Professor Emma McCabe and Professor Robert Palgrave‘s presentation stood out the most to me. They reflected the breadth of topics that crystallography covers, beyond the limit of finding a perfect structure match, demonstrating how the crucial know-how of symmetry dependent structure-property relationships and order-disorder can be used to drive materials discovery. The other highlights were the tutorial style talks by Professor Alexandra Gibbs and Dr Struan Simpson, and method development talks by Ms Celine Beck, Dr Sam Lewis and Dr Rebecca Scatena.

In parallel to the academic representation, the BCA also provided a very good platform to industrial stakeholders to showcase their available capabilities in instrumentation and computation, through exhibits and talks designed for supporting the advancement of crystallography research. I thoroughly enjoyed visiting the exhibition stalls (and collecting stamps!) as it encouraged conversations centred around common goals for academic as well as industrial research in crystallography, showing that these two fields are not mutually exclusive.

Attending this conference has motivated me to become a member of the BCA. I wish to support the excellent ongoing initiatives to unite all crystallographers in the UK on a single platform. After the conference, I also gave a talk in my group in Cambridge, summarising my experiences at the conference and encouraging my colleagues to attend the future BCA meetings. I eagerly look forward to future continuous engagement with fellow BCA members as we progress further in the field.