Written by Alexandra Heidecker, PhD student at TU Munich.
With excitement all attending people – or at least myself – were looking forward to the 30th Annual Meeting of the Society of Crystallography (14. – 17.03.2022), when it was announced as a live event at the LMU in Munich with conference dinner and socializing event. Unfortunately, due to strict Covid-regulations in January, the organization committee decided to host the event as online-only. Nevertheless, the online conference was a great success with lots of contributions including plenary lectures, talks, posters and workshops from all over the world.
The opening ceremony started with a guided tour through the crystal exhibition combined with classical music and welcoming words from Munich. Afterwards, this year’s award winners were honoured. Among them were Alexander Feige, Noah Nachtigall and Kristopher Nolte, who won the Lieselotte Templeton Award, which was given out for the first time. After this nice opening, the scientific program started ranging from crystalline materials, methods and techniques in crystallography, biocrystallography, organic and inorganic crystallography and many more.
One of my favorite sessions were the Lightning Talks by the Young Crystallographers with 11 contributions. Here, poster presenters could advertise their posters or give a short presentation about their research. It was really interesting how diverse the young crystallographers introduced their posters. After advertising a limited selection of posters, the poster sessions took place on Tuesday and Wednesday in the afternoon. These sessions were hold in BigBlueButton, where nice scientific and non-scientific discussions happened.
I also presented my research during the Lightning Talk Session. I am now at the end of my 2nd PhD-year at the TU Munich with Dr. Alexander Pöthig and investigate non-covalent interactions of the pillarplex pseudorotaxane. This topic of my PhD was recently published online [1] and will be part of the Special Issue “Spotlight on Germany’s Young Crystallographers” in the journal “Zeitschrift für Kristallographie – Crystalline Materials”, which made the presentation within the community of the German Crystallographic Society (DGK) a very special event.
Another highlight of the conference was the electronic Pub Meeting on
Wedensday in the app gather town. Here, you could create your own emoji and walk around not only in a pub, but also on a beach, while meeting other attendees. Unfortunately, my social event was interrupted by internet problems. By the way, the Young Crystallographers meet here monthly. So come on over!
After interesting talks on the newest research of SARS-CoV2 on Thursday, it was time for the announcement of the poster prize winners. The prizes sponsored by STOE were awarded to Niels Lefeld, Helena Butkiewicz and Maria Annette Herz.
After this nice online-only event, I am still looking forward for the 31st annual DGK meeting next year as live event in Frankfurt, where one highlight will be the 10th anniversary of the AK Young Crystallographers.
[1] A. A. Heidecker, M. Bohn, A. Pöthig: Crystal structure of a hexacationic Ag(I)-pillarplex-dodecyl-diammonium pseudo-rotaxane as terephthalate salt, Zeitschrift für Kristallographie (2022). https://doi.org/10.1515/zkri-2021-2076