Dutch Crystallographic Society

NVvM Cryo-EM Spring Meeting, Thursday 31 May, 2018, University of Groningen, The Netherlands

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This year’s spring meeting of the cryo-electron microscopy workgroup of the NVvM, will be held on Thursday 31 May 2018, at the Energy Academy, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 6, 9747 AG Groningen, The Netherlands.

The keynote speaker is:

Prof. Werner Kühlbrandt (Max Planck Institute of Biophysics, Frankfurt)

The program can be found here. You can also download a flyer of the event. Registration can be done before May 22nd on this page.

Prior to the Spring Meeting the opening of the new Cryo‐EM Facility at the  University of Groningen will take place on Wednesday 30 May, from 4 pm. We will not only celebrate the future, but also look back in history and celebrate 60 years of EM history at Groningen. A more international and broader talk on the advances of EM will be given by Werner Kühlbrandt. You are cordially invited to be present at this occasion.
Please indicate your interest on the registration website.

 

The Belgian Biophysical Society has organized a school on X-ray and Neutron Diffraction Techniques at the  Inflammation Research Center (IRC) of the VIB-UGent.

This school provides an introduction to the vast range of X-ray and neutron diffraction techniques and their application to investigate biological structures and processes. Starting from an introduction of the basics of X-ray and neutron scattering we will move on to their application to proteins and their complexes with other proteins or nucleic acids, to lipid structures and studies of bacterial metabolism. The course will also provide a glimpse of the international research facilities (such as XFEL) available. The school is organized as such that no prior knowledge of scattering techniques is required.

The program can be found here. Registration can be done here.

The nucleation process of proteins has been studied by a group of researchers from Brussels, Eindhoven and Grenoble. They used time-resolved cryo-transmission electron microscopy for this investigation. The results give insight in what happens on the molecular level when crystallization starts and how this influences later the macroscopic states. They published their findings in the prestigious journal Nature:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25971

Positive remarks, requests for more information and “who-can-help-me-with-my”s and more courses: some of reasons why the organizers are happy to have initiated this short and dense introduction to crystallography and powder diffraction. Even today we had 12 more measurements to do at our instruments in Delft to be able to “treat your own data” in the afternoon session tomorrow.

The Hands-on Powder Diffraction School is fully booked!

We have forty participants who will follow an intensive 2 day course in powder diffraction including hands-on training.

The  course will take place on 21 & 22 November 2017 at the Reactor Institute Delft, Mekelweg 15, Delft.

The school is organized by Amarante Böttger (3mE, TUDelft), Huub Kooijman (Shell Technology Center Amsterdam), Rene de Gelder (Radboud University Nijmegen), Céleste Reiss (NVK), Lambert van Eijck (Appl.Sci. TUDelft)

If you are interested in a follow-up of this course, please send an email to us at our “education at” email address.

The registration for the yearly meeting and the annual member meeting (ALV) is now open!

The NVK symposium of 2017 will take place on Friday 3 November 2017, at the Pivot Park in Oss. Following the symposium, the annual member meeting (ALV) of the NVK will be held, at the same location.

We have a diverse program with speakers from different disciplines:

• Nicholas Pearce, Universiteit Utrecht
• Junyu Li, DSM R&D Solutions
• Stef Smeets, Stockholm University, Sweden
• Bernd Souvignier, Radboud University Nijmegen
• Ad van Well, TU Delft

After lunch you will be able to visit the Pivot Park Screening Centre  or the Museum Jan Cunen. More details about the program and the venue as well as the registration for the meeting can be found on this page.

We look forward to see you in Oss on November 3!

It is with deep regret that we have heard that Ted Janssen passed away on September 29, 2017  at the age of 81.

Ted Janssen was professor of Theoretical Physics at Radboud University Nijmegen.  He was a pioneer in the symmetry description of aperiodic crystals. In 1988 he  received the Aminoff prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science and in 2014 the Ewald prize of the International Union of Crystallography.

An obituary can be found here.

FRI, SEP 15, 2017 08:00 CET

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Gregori Aminoff Prize in Crystallography 2018 to Professor Piet Gros from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, “for his fundamental contributions to understanding the complement system-mediated innate immune response”.

Read more at the site of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

The 26th Congress & General Assembly of the International Union of Crystallography 2023 will be held in Melbourne, Australia.

During the general assembly of the International Union of Crystallography, Melbourne has won their bid for the 26th IUCr meeting in 2023. The venue will be the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre (MCEC), on the banks of the Yarra River. The proposed dates are 22-29 August 2023.

 

 

It is with deep sorrow we have heard that Philip Coppens passed away on 21-Jun-2017 (age 86).

Philip Coppens was born in Amersfoort and did his PhD at the University of Amsterdam. After appointments at the Weizmann Institute and the Brookhaven National Laboratory he spend most of his career in Buffalo. In 2005 he received the Ewald prize of the IUCr.

The following links give more info on Philip Coppens and his work:

http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2017/06/031.html
http://www.amercrystalassn.org/h_coppens_memoir