Report for 2005 of the IUCr Commission on High Pressure

Combining high pressure with crystallography remains a very challenging and growing field with a big variety of technical developments and scientific applications. The stated goal of the high-pressure commission is to facilitate the exchange of new ideas, development and know-how. The main tool to achieve this are special workshops in each of the two years between the triennial IUCr congress. In the years of the triennial congress and general assembly the commission tries to integrate this workshop into the congress by organizing microsymposia specifically targeted to high-pressure crystallography.

Therefore, the commission organized 6 microsymposia within the XX general congress of the IUCr. The topics covered were ‘biological and organic soft condensed material under pressure’, ‘computational crystallography applied to extreme conditions’, n’ovel materials under high pressure’, ‘structural phase transitions and properties at high pressure’, ‘crystallography at conditions of earth and planetary interiors’, and ‘liquids and amorphous systems at high pressure’. In addition, commission members John Loveday and Igor Goncharenko organized two open commission meetings on the topics on ‘technical development in high-pressure crystallography’ on one hand and ‘advances in high-pressure single-crystal diffraction’ on the other hand. Both, microsymposia and open commission meetings (OCM) were very well attended with attendances between 60 (OCM’s) and 100 (microsymposia) persons.

The commission was also happy to see two of the keynote lectures to be given by high-pressure scientists, namely Dr. John Tse (CLS, commission member) and Dr. Malcolm Mc Mahon (Univ. Edinburgh).

The IUCr general assembly was also used for a closed commission meeting. The most important topic of this meeting was a major reshuffling of commission members. Four very active members (John Parise, Russ Hemley, Werner Kuhs, Igor Goncharenko) reached the limit of their terms and were replaced by Vladimir Soloshenko, Simon Redfern, Andrzej Katrusiak and Giulia Galli. When replacing the departing members, the commission tried to take into consideration geographical and gender balance, as well as scientific expertise. It is the stated goal of the commission on high-pressure to cover the whole breath of high-pressure crystallography. This is also the reason, the commission insists on its rather unusual large number of members. On top of the new members, 4 new consultants have been appointed. These are Ross Angel, Przemek Dera, Guoyin Shen and Igor Goncharenko. They were selected in view of their specific expertise (Shen, Angel), and/or active role in organizing future workshops (Dera, Goncharenko).

Further topics discussed were the commission’s involvement in establishing a high-pressure specific cif-code (Angel, Katrusjak) as well as upcoming workshops and summer schools.

In 2006, the commission is planning for a workshop hosted in Dubna. Anatoli Balagurov acts as the head of the local organizing committee; commission consultant Igor Goncharenko will be the link to the commission.

In 2007 another workshop is planned, this time at the new UK synchrotron source Diamond. Commission member John Loveday will be the commission link to the local organizers.

For the 2008 IUCr general congress, commission member Nom Hamaya is proposed to act as member of the program committee representing the commission on high-pressure.

In 2009, commission consultant Przemek Dera is organizing a summer school on high-pressure crystallography in Erice. This as a follow up on the very successful summer school organized in 2003.

The high-pressure commissions Homepage is maintained by the commission member John Loveday and continues to update the high-pressure community on information with respect to software, future and past meetings, central facilities, scientists and publications in the high-pressure field. The homepage can be accessed on http://www.iucr.org/iucr-top/comm/chp/index.html

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These pages are maintained by the Commission Last updated: 15 Oct 2021