BCA – Chemical Crystallography

2014 British Crystallographic Association Spring Meeting

Apr 112014

bca2014logo The 2014 British Crystallographic Meeting Spring Meeting took place at the University of Loughborough from 7th – 10th April. The meeting took place during the International Year of Crystallography and therefore had a theme of “Looking to the future, learning from the past”.

Contributions originating from Chem. Cryst. included:

Amber L. Thompson
Just a Spoonful of Neutrons helps the Chemistry move on… (Session: Applications of neutron diffraction in chemical crystallography)

Jerome G. P. Wicker
Predicting Crystallisation Propensity of Small Molecules: Will it Crystallise (Session: Complementary Non-diffraction techniques II)

Rajiv Gogna & Richard I. Cooper
Virtual screening of co-crystals: using molecular shape to predict suitable coformers for quasiracemic structures (Poster)

James Arnold & Richard I. Cooper
Evaluating the Use of Advanced Anisotropic Displacement Parameters Restraints for Dealing with Poor Quality or Limited Resolution Data (Poster – given an honorable mention in the Chemical Group Poster Prizes)

Pascal Parois
An open-source diffractometer strategy calculation applied to excited state measurements. (Poster – winner of the Computational Poster Prize awarded by OlexSys)

Karim J. Sutton
Talk at the Young Crystallographers Satellite Meeting

Chem. Cryst. at the Big Bang Fair

Mar 122013

The Big Bang Fair is a free educational event open to visiting school groups that happens in March every year moving round the country. It works with partner organisations across business and industry, government and academia to try and give a flavour of the real scale of engineering and science in the UK, aimed at showing young people (primarily aged 7-19) just how many exciting and rewarding opportunities there are out there for them with the right experience and qualifications.

This year the Big Bang Fair is being held in the London, ExCeL Arena, 14^th-17^th March. Since 2013 is the Bragg centenary, STFC have very kindly funded a stand at this year’s fair, which will be totally dedicated to crystallography. The BCA, Diamond Light Source, ISIS and STFC have worked together to develop the stand designed to tell everyone how great crystallography is through the medium of hands on activities, lasers, and sweets. The fair is expecting 75,000 people (mostly children) through the doors over the course of four days, so Andrew Cairns, Josh Hill, Nick Funnell, Mike Glazer, George Pidgeon, Karim Sutton and Amber Thompson are all going along from Oxford to help out. Here are some photos of the first day.

Two crystallographers check the interlocks on the Lego Beamline

You are never too young to learn about packing…

…especially when there’s sweets involved!

Teaching physicists chemistry

George demonstrates the Lego Beamline

Smelly molecules

Demonstrating Fourier transforms takes concentration

Growing a crystal, one marble at a time

Protein crystals are beautiful

The Crystallography stand at the Big Bang

BCA Spring Meeting 2012

Apr 202012

The 2012 Meeting of the British Crystallographic Association was held at Warwick University. Oxford was very well represented this year with Kirsten Christensen chairing the Programme Committee and prizes being awarded to Joe Paddison, Nick Funnell and Emma McKinley.

Other contributions from Oxford include:

Karim J. Sutton, Kirsten E. Christensen, Amber L. Thompson & Richard I. Cooper
Exploiting the Tunable Wavelength Capabilities of I19 (Poster & Oral Presentation)

Callum A. Young & Andrew L. Goodwin
An Examination of the Low Temperature Structure of Fe₃O₄ Using Reverse Monte Carlo Refinements (Oral Presentation)

Andrew L. Goodwin
Frameworks, Flexibility and Frustration (Oral Presentation)

Kirsten E. Christensen, Amber L. Thompson & Arwen R Pearson
Discussion Forum: From Small Molecules to Proteins: Bridging the Gap

Emma J. McKinley, Kirsten E. Christensen & Amber L. Thompson
Investigation of the Transient Modulated Phase of Barluenga’s Reagent (Poster)

Andrew B. Cairns, Amber L. Thompson, Andrew L, Goodwin, Matthew G. Tucker & Julien Haines
Anomalous Compression of Cyanide Frameworks: Mechanisms for Extreme Negative Response (Poster)

Callum A. Young, Edward Dixon, Michael A. Hayward & Andrew L. Goodwin
Apical Oxygen Bonding in YBCO – A Reverse Monte Carlo Approach (Poster)

Ines E. Collings, Andrew B. Cairns, Amber L. Thompson, Andrew L, Goodwin, Philip Pattison, Julien Haines, Matthew G. Tucker, Julia E. Parker & Chiu C. Tang
Transferable Mechanics in Molecular Framework Materials (Poster)

Joseph A. M. Paddison, Andrew L. Goodwin, Ross Stewart, Pascal Manuel, Matthias J. Gutmann, David A. Keen, Matthew G. Tucker, Andrew Wildes & Brian Rainford
Frustration and Magnetic Diffuse Scattering in β-Mn_0.8Co_0.2 and MnO: A Reverse Monte Carlo Study (Poster)

Matthew Cliffe & Andrew L. Goodwin
Disorder and Defects in Zirconium MOFs (Poster)

Nicholas P. Funnell, Martin T. Dove Andrew L. Goodwin Simon Parsons & Matthew G. Tucker
How Molecules Prepare to Undergo a Transition: The Onset of Disorder in Solid Cyclohexane (Poster).

Karim speaks to the Young Crystallographers

Emma, Richard and Ines go to the conference dinner

Ines and Emma

This time Karim brought his Dad…

Callum and Emma at Dinner

Kirsten presents Nick with his prize

Emma receives her prize

Contemplating Fourier Transforms…

Emma’s Prize-winning Rap

Apr 202012

My poster is all about Barluenga’s Reagent,
A cool iodinating and oxidising agent.
It is known to have a solid-state transition,
But we didn’t know at what temperature position.

Variable temperature X-ray diffraction
Let us investigate the transition action.
In addition, we found something a little surprising,
Extra reflections in precession images were arising.

After some thinking we came to the conclusion,
A transient modulated phase must be the solution.
So if this poem has got you excited,
Come and see my poster…

…You are all invited!

E. J. McKinley
BCA 2012.

Emma receives her prize

BCA Spring Meeting 2011

Apr 112011

The BCA Spring Meeting was held at the University of Keele in Staffordshire. Contributions from Chem. Cryst. included:

Richard I. Cooper, Amber L. Thompson & David J. Watkin
Standard Uncertainties and Experimental Design (Poster)

Amber L. Thompson & David J. Watkin
“Unpublishable” Data: Does My R-factor Look Big in This? (Poster)

David Watkin
What’s all this MoOing about? (Presentation)

Chemical Crystallography – Science, Technology or a Black Art

Jul 132010

Cryst. Rev. (2010), 16(3), 197-230. [ doi:10.1080/08893110903483246 ]

X-ray single crystal structure analysis has become a gold standard for the determination of molecular geometry. The reliability of the technique is a triumph for science and technology working together. The uniqueness of well-crystalline material intrigued early natural philosophers, and their examinations, followed by the discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals, led to the powerful technology that we now enjoy. For about three quarters of a century molecular structure determination has been a driving force for crystallographic research, but now that the science has matured into a technology, interest is returning in trying to understand the nature of crystals themselves.

BCA Spring Meeting 2010

Apr 152010

Susan Huth presents Kirsten Christensen with the Durward Cruickshank Award

The final dinner of the British Crystallographic Association Spring Meeting in Warwick was interrupted, as always, with the prize winning awards. Amber Thompson was awarded the International Union of Crystallography Prize (a copy of International Tables) for her explanation of the advantages of choosing non-standard space groups. Kirsten Christensen was awarded the Durward Cruickshank prize for a young crystallographer who had made an outstanding contribution to crystallography.

Other contributions include:

N. David Brown, James Haestier, Mustapha Sadki, Amber L. Thompson & David J. Watkin
matchbOx: Automatic Structure Matching to Facilitate Crystallographic Refinement (YC Presentation)

Kirsten E. Christensen, Christopher J. Serpell, Nicholas E. Evans & Paul D. Beer
Pushing the Boundaries of Small Molecule Crystallography: The Challenging Structure of a Macrocyclic Anion Sensor (Poster)

Richard I. Cooper, Amber L. Thompson & David J. Watkin
The Hydrogen Challenge: Where are we Now? (Poster)

Christopher J. Serpell & Paul D. Beer
Refinement of Large Supramolecular Structures (Presentation)

David J. Watkin
Dealing with Difficult Data (Session Chair)

BCA Spring Meeting 2009

Apr 212009

The 2009 British Crystallographic Association Spring Meeting was held at the University of Loughborough. Contributions from Chem. Cryst. included:

N. David Brown, James Haestier, Mustapha Sadki, David J. Watkin & Amber L. Thompson
A Further Improved Structure Matching Algorithm (Poster)

James Haestier
Effects of Cell Errors on Derived Parameters (YC Presentation)

James Haestier
Computation of Cell Errors Effects on Derived Parameters (Poster)

Mustapha Sadki & David J. Watkin
New Framework for Reliable Refinement Data Types (Presentation)

David Watkin gives the Kathleen Lonsdale Lecture

Apr 012009

David Watkin gives the Lonsdale Lecture

Every two years, the Young Crystallographers Group of the British Crystallographic Association nominate a speaker to give the prestigious Kathleen Lonsdale Lecture. Traditionally, they invite well respected scientist who has a good rapport with students. This year the Lonsdale Lecturer was David Watkin who is well known within the community, principally as a result of his involvement with the highly respected refinement software CRYSTALS, developed in Oxford and through the BCA biannual teaching school which he co-founded twenty-five years ago.

BCA Award for David Watkin

Apr 012009

Presentation to mark David Watkin becoming Honorary Member of the BCA

David Watkin has been elected as Honorary Member of the British Crystallographic Association for his outstanding services to the organisation and crystallography as a whole. The award was made in particular recognition of his role as a teacher, in both the UK and worldwide. The presentation was made at the annual meeting of the BCA which was held at the end of April at Loughborough University.

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