The school will take place in Granada (Spain) from June 3th to June 6th, 2013. It will cover a wide range of topics related with the application of High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscope in the investigation of minerals at nanoscale and include practical work by using the equipments of the Centro de Investigación Científica (CIC) of the University of Granada: Philips CM-20 and FEI Titan. Practical work also includes preparation of samples and interpretation of data.
The official language of the School will be English.
The School is addressed to:

• Postgraduate students
• Teachers
• Researchers
• Experts from industry

The number of participants is limited to 40 in order to keep operative the practical sessions. Admittance will be made on a first come, first serve basis.

Sponsors

The EMU school 2013 on Minerals at Nanoscale is mainly sponsored by the University of Granada, the Centro de Instrumentación Científica, FEI, the Spanish Mineralogical Society (Sociedad Española de Mineralogía, SEM), Deutsche Mineralogische Gesellschaft (DMG) and Instituto Andaluz de Ciencias de la Tierra (IACT)

Purpose of the Course

 X-ray crystallography is the pre-eminent technique for obtaining the 3D structures of macromolecules at the level of individual atoms. These structures are central to understanding the detailed mechanisms of biological processes and to discovering novel therapeutics using a structure-based approach. Great advances continue to be made in the methods for determining crystal structures, pushing the frontiers, allowing the pace of structural understanding to increase and making it possible to respond efficiently and rapidly to emerging threats. This course will help to equip the next generation of scientists with a deep understanding of the tools they need to solve challenging structural projects and an appreciation for what the future holds.

Purpose of the Course

The determination of three dimensional structures of new materials is frequently the starting point for mechanistic studies, revealing structure-property relationships, modelling of molecular variants and intelligent design for specific properties. However, these are traditionally static results and although we can follow structure evolution with temperature and pressure, it is far less easy to study time evolution when the time scales of the processes involved are short. The latest high intensity X-ray sources, fast detectors, new techniques and modern software are now taking us into the regime of conducting timeâ€"resolved studies and it is this aspect of structural science that we shall be exploring during this course.

X-ray and neutron diffraction are the most powerful methods for elucidating full 3-D structures from single crystals and microcrystalline powder samples for many forms of matter. The techniques are continuously evolving enabling ever more challenging questions to be addressed and the most difficult of problems to be solved. We shall be describing time resolved studies in crystallography, spectroscopy and computation and looking also at applications of this work as well as looking forward to the future and exciting opportunities and challenges that facilities such as XFEL will bring to the field.

We shall concentrate during the course on:

1) Photocrystallography â€" obtaining structural information from short lived crystalline species.

2) Time resolved spectroscopy - identifying and characterising intermediates and correlating these results with structural data.

3) The future â€" current and upcoming developments in dynamic structural techniques.

4) Theoretical calculation â€" correlating with and supporting experimental studies through computational calculations.

And in addition to the lectures we shall be presenting demonstration and workshop sessions providing training in using modern computer programs in these aforementioned areas.

Brief Description:

The last decade has seen an exponential growth in the results obtained by macromolecular crystallography, both in terms of number of structures and their complexity. This growth is having a significant impact on molecular and cellular biology, as more and more macromolecular structures have been instrumental in elucidating biological functions.Â

The objective of this introductory workshop is to expose the participants to the methodologies used to solve macromolecular structures, using single crystal X-ray diffraction techniques. Structural biology is an interdisciplinary research area, requiring expertises from both the life sciences and the physical sciences: the school aims to bridge the gap between physics and biology by providing a comprehensive overview of the field, starting from the gene to obtain the atomic structure. A short overview of other structural biology techniques will also be presented. The educational program will be based both on lectures and practical sessions.Â

The school is part of a joint initiative between Elettra, IAEA and SESAME, the Middle East synchrotron radiation facility in Jordan.

Main Topics:

• Bioinformatics analysis to identify structural targets and optimise constructs design
• Molecular biology and cloning techniques
• Protein expression and purification
• Crystallisation
• Data collection & reduction
• Structure determination
• Model building, refinement and model validation
• Small Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS)
• An overview of other structural biology techniques

The 2012 PCG-SCMP Powder Diffraction and Rietveld Refinement School will be held at the University of Durham from Sunday 25th to Thursday 29th of March. Lectures will be given by Jeremy Cockcroft, Andy Fitch, John Evans and Ivana Evans. There will also be small group tutorials and a large number of hands-on practical computer sessions.
Topics to be covered will include:

• Data collection strategies for X-ray and neutron diffraction
• Constant wavelength and time of flight diffraction
• Modelling peak shapes
• Indexing powder patterns
• Rietveld, Le Bail and Pawley fitting methods
• X-ray and neutron combined Rietveld refinement
• Extended solids and molecular systems
• Restrained refinements
• Rigid body refinements

Magnetic refinements will not be explicitly covered.
Accommodation will be at Grey College Durham and lectures/computer workshops will be held in/near the Chemistry Department. Durham is on the fast east coast rail track. London is ~2.75 hours and Edinburgh 2 hours. There are a number of cheap flights to Newcastle Airport (e.g. flybe to Exeter/Southampton; Easy Jet to Bristol/Stanstead/Geneva/Nice, etc). More travel information can be found here.
For more information please email ivana.radosavljevic@durham.ac.uk.
Thanks to our 2012 sposors: the IUCr, Rigaku and Bruker.

Synchrotron Charge Density School at ChemMatCARS

The aim of the school is to provide young researchers with a hands-on experience enabling them to utilize new crystallographic instruments and techniques, especially the combination of X-ray and neutron diffraction, to investigate the structure of matter at the atomic level. The school will provide an opportunity to integrate the relationship between experiment and theory when addressing real world problems of chemical, biological and technical importance. The end result will be to ensure the next generation of researchers develop an awareness of dynamic, cutting edge experimental techniques.
Participants are invited to submit a beam time proposal and four proposals will be selected to carry out hands-on data collection and analysis during the workshop. Both new and experienced users of the APS are invited to attend.

• Beamtime begins at 8:00 am on Saturday March 9, 2013 (by proposal application).
• Formal program held March 11-15, 2013.
• Class size limited to 40.
• Meals, onsite lodging, and partial travel support provided (more info »).
• Registration fee $75 for students and postdocs, $300 for senior scientists and faculty, due upon acceptance to the workshop.
• Application deadline is December 31, 2012.

Foreword

The department of Physics, Faculty of Sciences and Techniques, University Cheikh Anta Diop, in collaboration with the University of Trento, Italy, following the success of the second African School and Workshop on X-rays in Materials, held in Dakar, in January 2009, organizes the third edition of such school-workshop.

Aims

• promoting the scientific cooperation between African researchers in the material science area
• introducing the principal techniques of structural investigation of materials using X-rays, with particular attention to X-ray diffraction from powders and X-ray scattering from non-crystalline materials
• training young researchers by means of practical exercises of x-ray powder diffraction measurements and data analysis on computer
• presenting the actual research advances on material characterisation using advanced X-ray techniques.

Topics

• Basic crystallography
• Interaction of X-rays with matter
• X-ray sources and instrumentation
• X-ray powder diffraction
• X-ray scattering from non-crystalline system
• Applications of X-ray diffraction to Material Science
• Other techniques: X-ray diffusion; X-ray absorption and photemission spectroscopies and their application to Material Science

International Advisory Committee

• Gilberto Artioli, University of Padova, Italy
• Alastair N. Cormak Alfred University, Usa
• Karimat El-Sayed Ain-Shams University, Egypt
• Paolo Fornasini, University of Trento, Italy
• Pierre Lagarde, SOLEIL, Paris, France
• Silvano Lizzit, Elettra Trieste, Italy
• Takafumi Miyanaga, University of Hirosaki, Japan
• Settimio Mobilio University Roma 3 Italy
• Francesco Rocca, IFN-CNR and FBK, Trento, Italy
• Paolo Scardi, University of Trento, Italy
• Adrian Wright, Reading University, UK

Local Organizing Committee

• Chairman: Djibril Diop
• Members: Aboubaker C. Bèye, Issakha Youm,  Ahmadou Wagué, Arame B. Faye, Coumba Thiandoume, Abdou Ciss Wade, Bridinette Thiodjio Sendja, Ibrahima Diouf

Technical and Scientific Assistant

• Roberto Graziola, University of Trento, Italy

International Union of Crystallography Commission on Mathematical and Theoretical Crystallography

International School on Fundamental Crystallography

followed by a one-day Workshop day on the Representation Theory of Space Groups

Second MaThCryst School in Latin America

Montevideo, Uruguay, 29 November - 4 December 2010
The Commission on Mathematical and Theoretical Crystallography is strongly committed to promote education in all the fundamental aspects of crystallography that nowadays are overlooked in common University courses. This mission is accomplished through a series of meetings in a wide range of regions. In fall 2010 we organized a school in Montevideo, Uruguay, that continues our activity in the region after the previous school in Havana.

MaThCryst Workshop on Crystallographic Software

Tokyo, 12-16 December 2011

Program

The workshop presented lectures and practical exercises on the following crystallographic software packages.

• Vesta
• MoPro
• Bilbao Crystallographic Server
• Jana 2006
• Geminography
• Chardi

Lecturers

• Dr. Koichi Momma, Tsukuba
• Prof. Michal Dusek, Prague
• Dr. Benoît Guillot, Nancy
• Prof. Massimo Nespolo, Nancy
• Prof. Mois Aroyo, Bilbao

Local Organizing Committee

• Dr. Kenjiro Fujimoto, Chair
• Prof. Shigeru Ito
• Prof. Yasushi Idemoto
• Miss Chihiro Yamakawa

International Program Committee

• Prof. Massimo Nespolo, Nancy (Chair)
• Prof. Izumi Nakai, Tokyo
• Prof. Mois Aroyo, Bilbao
• Prof. Michal Dusek, Prague

Venue

The workshop was held at the Tokyo University of Science, Noda campus. It was postponed from the original scheduled dates of 22-26 May 2011 because of the tsunami.

The fifth BioCrys course will be focused on Macromolecular Crystallography, by developing the fundamental concepts of Crystallography and illustrate these by tutorial and practical sessions.
This is particularly important due to the rapid development of the field and also due to the fact that many young researchers do not receive a formal education in Crystallography. Additionally, with the introduction of high-throughput methods, the need to understand and grasp the theory behind modern methods will certainly be critical to overcome the difficult problems that will arise and will not be solved by the automated procedures.
Topics of the course will run from fundamentals such as symmetry, point groups and crystal systems, basic diffraction physics, reciprocal space and the Ewalds sphere, radiation damage, data processing, symmetry in the diffraction pattern, structure factors, Patterson function to modern methodologies including molecular replacement, SAD, MAD, MIR and maximum likelihood phasing, direct methods, density modification, refinement, model building, twinning and structure validation.
The course will be organized with lectures in the mornings and interactive practicals and tutorials in the afternoons. Evening lectures on current topics will be presented by the invited speakers. Participants will be limited to 36, aimed primarly at people at the beginning of their crystallographic research activity as PhD students or others. Selected applicants are invited to present a poster during the course.

Aperiodic crystals are long range ordered structures which lack translational invariance. They are found in a large variety of systems (minerals, organic compounds, single element under pressure, oxides, ferro-electrics, intermetallic compounds) and encompass incommensurately modulated structures, incommensurate composites and quasicrystals.Â

The structure determination of aperiodic crystals and the influence of the aperiodic order on their physical properties have made tremendous progress in recent years. However the high dimensional description and superspace approach used to describe the atomic structure of aperiodic crystal remains difficult to grasp for the non specialist.Â

This is why the Commission on Aperiodic Crystals and the Commission on Teaching Crystallography of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) have decided to organize a school on Aperiodic Crystals.Â

The targeted audience is clearly a non-specialist one: Phd students or experienced scientists working in the field of crystallography, chemistry, material science or solid state physic and willing to have a basic understanding of aperiodic crystals.Â

The school will be organized on 5 days in Carqueiranne, south of France. Experts in the field of aperiodic crystal will give lectures, in a tutorial way and on a step by step basis. The number of participants will be limited to 65 in order to facilitate exchanges.Â

After an introduction to the high dimensional concept on simple 1D or 2D toy model examples, the basis of the structure determination of aperiodic crystal will be introduced for each class of aperiodic crystals. Various examples will then be presented, together with overviews on phase transitions, phonon and phasons, simulations and aperiodic crystal stability.Â

Tutorial in small groups (20) will also be organized in order to practice the notion learned in the lectures.

School location

The school will take place in Carqueiranne, on the Mediterranean sea nearby Toulon. The weather is expected to be nice and mild at this season. Housing will be on-site in a 2 star type hotel. Double occupancy will be organized for student participants.

More

Organisers and sponsors IUCr commission on Aperiodic crystals under the responsibility of M. de Boissieu (chairman), G. Chapuis and S. van Smaalen, with the support of the IUCr commission on teaching crystallography, the IUCr, CNRS, SIMAP, OUP, UJF XENOCS, OD and C-MAC.

Purpose of the Course

Structural crystallography is often thought to be synonymous with single-crystal crystallography, yet for several decades, powder diffraction has made important contributions to the understanding of materials structure and behaviour.

However, it is perhaps the last decade that has seen some of the most remarkable breakthroughs in experimental powder diffraction and in the analysis of powder diffraction data, to the extent that it is no longer considered to be an analytical technique of last resort.Â

Instrumentation at both the laboratory and facility level has become increasingly versatile to the extent that throughput and resolution are no longer mutually exclusive. In the field of data analysis, ingenious algorithms that take full advantage of modern computing power have meant that inorganic, molecular and even protein structures are being solved and refined relatively routinely.

This course is intended to serve as a complete introduction to the diverse field of powder diffraction, and will provide a firm grounding from which attendees can build future research achievements.

Purpose of the Course

In the era of nanoscience, the size of particles to be investigated gets smaller and smaller but the traditional techniques used for characterization of materials are becoming inadequate. Electron Crystallography (EC) is a powerful and sometimes the unique tool to study crystal structure and properties of nano sized materials. It is a broad branch of science comprising both academic research and industrial needs. Materials studied using EC methods vary in size and nature, ranging from inorganic nanoparticles to biological samples.Â

Exciting developments such as aberration correctors, dedicated specimen-holders, highly sensitive cameras, new data acquisition techniques, automated routines for data collection and new data processing softwares allow electron crystallographers to solve crystal structures from nano particles at atomic resolution.

The Course intends to review the structure solution using electron crystallography methods as well as novel applications; it will be divided into three major fields:

1. provide a strong background on crystallography in general and electron crystallography in particular
2. introduce students to upcoming techniques for data acquisition and data processing as well as to the state-of-the-art electron microscopy
3. cover different approaches for structure solution and derive structure-property relationship

The emphasis will be given on the following subjects: structural and charge density studies of organic molecules like pigments and drugs, protein structures, complicated inorganic and metallic materials in the amorphous, nano-, meso- and quasi-crystalline state, minerals and magnetic materials.

ISBC 2011 - Overview

The Laboratory of Crystallographic Studies (CSIC-UGR) organised the 3rd International School on Biological Crystallization under the auspices of the International Union of Crystallography through the Commission of Crystal Growth. The event took place in the Centre of the beautiful City of Granada, an ideal place to promote close scientific and social interactions between the attendees.
ISBC covered five days of lectures and practical demonstrations carried by 27 selected experts in the fields of crystallisation of biological macromolecules and biomineralisation.
The first day, Sunday, served as an introduction to the School and also provided the first lectures on the purification and preparation of protein solutions.
The second day, Monday, focused on explaining the fundamentals of crystallisation from solution to protein crystals; covering a wide range of topics from the physicochemical properties of solutions, through nucleation and light scattering techniques to finish with crystal growth methods and handling of protein crystals.
Tuesday was devoted to special hot topics that included talks on the crystallisation of large crystals, complexes and membrane proteins.
The fourth day of the School was dedicated to a 'Demonstration Fair', at which 22 specialists offered short (20-40 minutes) practical sessions periodically at scheduled times. Participants were able to choose what sessions they wanted to attend and in the order they wished, so that they selected their own learning programme "a la carte". The Demonstrations' Fair proved to be an excellent teaching tool as it provided students with plenty of opportunities to interact on a personal basis with the teachers and to watch closely how to perform crystallisation experiments.
Finally, the last day of the School focused on the subjects of biomineralisation and biomimetic materials.

International Union of Crystallography

Commission on Mathematical and Theoretical Crystallography

School on Fundamental Crystallography

Mahdia, Tunisia, 9-13 April 2012
Organized by the Commission on Mathematical and Theoretical Crystallography (MaThCryst) and the Tunisian Crystallographic Association (Association Tunisienne de Cristallographie), in cooperation with the IUCr Commission on Crystallographic Teaching (CT).

Program

FUNDAMENTALS

• Introduction to matrix algebra
• Symmetry in nature and in human life

BASIC CONCEPTS

• Affine spaces vs. vector spaces
• Mappings: affine and Euclidean; isometries and symmetry operations
• Sets; homomorphisms, isomorphisms, automorphisms
• Introduction to group theory: abstract groups, subgroups, cosets

CRYSTALLOGRAPHY IN DIRECT SPACE

• Periodic structure of the crystalline matter
• Crystal lattice vs. crystal pattern and crystal structure
• Symmetry directions in a lattice
• Unit cells: primitive cells, multiple cells, conventional cells in 2D and 3D
• Crystal families
• Symmetry groups and types of symmetry in direct space
• • morphological symmetry
  • symmetry of physical properties
  • symmetry of lattices
  • symmetry of the unit cell content
  • symmetry of crystallographic patterns
• Hermann-Mauguin symbols for point groups
• lattice systems
• Crystal systems
• Stereographic projection and the morphology of crystals
• Types of crystallographic point groups through the stereographic projection
• Generation of space groups. Symmetry operations with and without a glide component. Hermann-Mauguin symbols for space groups
• Orthogonal projections of space groups. General and special positions, site-symmetry groups, crystallographic orbits
• Introduction to crystallographic calculations through matrix algebra. Abstract groups, subgroups, cosets
• Short introduction to the subgroups and supergroups of space groups
• Exercises on the space group diagrams from Volume A of the International Tables for Crystallography

PHYSICS OF DIFFRACTION AND CRYSTALLOGRAPHY IN RECIPROCAL SPACE

• Interaction of X-rays with crystalline matter
• Fourier transforms and convolutions
• Crystallographic calculations in reciprocal space
• Diffraction symmetry: Laue classes, Friedel's law, resonant scattering
• Integral, zonal and serial reflection conditions and their use to determine the space-group type
• Structure solution and refinement: introductory strategies

CRYSTALLOGRAPHY ONLINE: SHORT PRACTICAL COURSE ON THE USE AND APPLICATIONS OF THE BILBAO CRYSTALLOGRAPHIC SERVER

The aim of the course is to give a tutorial and practical guide to the crystallographic databases and some of the computer tools available on the Bilbao Crystallographic Server (www.cryst.ehu.es). Online exercises will help the participants to get some practical experience in the use and applications of the computer programs in treating problems of theoretical crystallography, solid-state physics and crystal chemistry.

1. Databases and computer tools for group-subgroup relations between space groups
   1. Crystallographic databases and access tools
      1. Space-group symmetry databases (International Tables for Crystallography, Volume A: Space-group symmetry)
      2. Maximal subgroups and minimal supergroups (International Tables for Crystallography, Volume A1: Symmetry relations between space groups)
      3. Brillouin-zone database
   2. Group-subgroup relations between space groups
      1. Study of general group-subgroup pair of space groups; Hermann theorem: twins and antiphase domains; coset decompositions. Supergroups of space groups
      2. Symmetry relations between Wyckoff positions for group-subgroup pairs; Baernighausen trees constructions
   3. Structure utilities and tools
      1. Equivalent structure descriptions; structure descriptions with respect to different space-group settings
      2. Comparison between different descriptions of the same structure
      3. Computer tools for the study of structural relationships
2. Tools for structural phase transitions on the Bilbao Crystallographic Server
   1. Structural pseudosymmetry
      1. Methods of pseudosymmetry search using supergroups of space groups
      2. Search for new ferroelectric and ferroelastic materials
   2. Phase transitions with group-subgroup relations between the space groups of the two phases
      1. Inverse Landau problem
      2. Symmetry-mode analysis of displacive phase transitions

Language

The official languages of the Schools were English and French. Bilingual tutors helped the participants during the guided exercises.

Venue

The School was held at the Hotel Thalassa. It had been postponed from the initial dates of 25-29 April 2011.