News from Latin America

First Latin American Crystallography Meeting

Córdoba, Argentina, October, 2013
From ACA RefleXions, Winter 2013

[Cordoba 1] (Front) Iris Torriani and Mario Suwalsky, (back) Claude Lecomte, Joel Bernstein, Hugo Monaco and Jordi Rius.
[Cordoba 2] Silvia Cuffini, Natalia De Vincentis, Iris Torriani, Aldo Craievich, Miguel Delgado, José Solís and J. R. Santisteban.
[Cordoba 3] Alexander Briceño and Mauricio Fuentealba, Middle: Viviana Dabbene and Raúl Carbonio, Back: Daniel Vega, Aldo Craievich, Edilso Reguero and Oscar Piro.
[Cordoba 4] Diego Lamas, Raúl Carbonio and Gautam Desiraju.
[Cordoba 5] Graciela Punte, Daniel Vega and Diego Lamas.

The Primera Reunión Latinoamericana de Cristalografía was held in conjunction with the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Argentinean Crystallographic Association (AACr) at the U. Nacional de Córdoba (UNC), Córdoba, Argentina. The meeting was preceded by the second workshop of the AACr dedicated to Neutron Diffraction Techniques for Materials Characterization. Alberto Podjarny (IGBMC, France), Gabriel Cuello, Mónica Jiménez-Ruiz (ILL, France) and Javier Campos (ICMA, Spain) participated as instructors. The fifth school of the AACr followed the meeting November 4-8. The theme of the school was Structure Solution and Microstructural Analysis from Powder Diffraction Data, and it was led by Jordi Rius and Carlos Frontera (ICMB, Spain) and Ernesto Estévez-Rams (ICTM, Cuba). Raúl Carbonio (UNC, Argentina) coordinated the local organizing committee. The scientific program included 11 plenaries, 8 semi-plenaries, 13 short presentations and about 130 poster presentations. Participants came from Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, México, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Perú, Uruguay and Venezuela) and from the US, Canada, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, UK, United Arab Emirates, South Africa and India. Invited speakers included Joel Bernstein, Claude Lecomte, Robert Dinnebier, Mino Caira and Bill Duax. An Honorary Doctorate from U. Nacional de Córdoba was conferred on Gautam Desiraju, IUCr President. Major equipment manufacturers (Agilent, Bruker and Rigaku), as well as the ICDD, were represented at the exhibit. Financial support for the event was provided by CONICET (Argentina), U. Nacional de Córdoba, IUCr and ICDD, among others. At the Latin American assembly it was decided to hold the Latin American meetings every year, except in the same year as an IUCr Congress. Brazil will host the 2015 meeting, and for 2016 it will be decided between Venezuela and Cuba.

Graciela Díaz de Delgado