Conference Call
The conference provided an ideal opportunity for the Journal of Physical Organic Chemistry is being Latin American participants to attend lectures by devoted to CLAFQO9, and participants have been prominent researchers, giving them valuable insights invited to submit manuscripts containing original into current and future trends in the field. In addition, unpublished work. many Latin American scientists had the opportunity to CLAFQO10 is to be held in Florianópolis, Brazil, exhibit their works to a prestigious audience of inter- 2009. It will be organized by Faruk Nome from the national scientists. All told, the conference promoted Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, the exchange of ideas in both formal and informal Brazil. ways, allowed for the renewal of personal contacts among friends and colleagues from Latin America and Adriana B. Pierini
30 CHEMISTRY International May-June 2008 Conference Call nected fields: from the isolated molecule to whole Malta III—Research and cellular systems, from the structure and reactivity of simple biological molecules to the investigation Education in the Middle East of the functionality of enzymes, nucleic acids, and by John M. Malin membranes, from looking at the fundamental physics underlying simple molecular processes to uses in clini- cal biochemistry. Known as “Malta III,” the third conference in the The participation of well-known specialists in dif- series, Frontiers of Chemical Sciences: Research and ferent domains of infrared spectroscopy provided a Education in the Middle East, was held in Istanbul, complete overview about the full potential of the tech- Turkey, from 8–13 December 2007. This remarkable nology. In this sense, it is worth mentioning the inter- series of meetings continues to bring scientists from esting lectures of Henry Mantsch, Dieter Naumann, Middle Eastern countries and other nations together Jürgen Schmitt, Rui Fausto, Ronald Birke, Urs Peter to discuss common problems and encourage col- Fringeli, José Luis Arrondo, Jean-Marie Ruysschaert, laborative research in the fields of energy, materials and Klaus Brandenburg among many others, which science, natural products, green chemistry, education, provided different points of views on the potential of and environment. FTIR. These perspectives definitely enriched the dis- Middle Eastern participation in Malta III was the cussions after each session. largest yet of the three conferences, named for the At the same time, the informal ambience of this island of Malta where the first two meetings were event also helped stimulate the interaction among held. Of the 90 participants, 67 were from Middle participants. This is particularly important for encour- Eastern countries: Bahrain (1) Egypt (9), Iran (8), Iraq aging open-minded younger scientists. (3), Israel—both Arabs and Jews (12), Jordan (9), The decision to hold the meeting in a “far away” city Kuwait (2), Lebanon (4), Palestinian Authority (10), such as Buenos Aires represented a big challenge. For Saudi Arabia (1), Turkey (4), United Arab Emirates (4). this reason, it was gratifying to have spectroscopists Other nations represented included Canada, Germany, from Asia, Africa, Europe, and America take part in the Norway, Switzerland, UK, and USA. meeting. This created a valuable human richness that As in Malta I and II, a multinational organizing com- was much appreciated by the participants. mittee chaired by Zafra M. Lerman from Columbia During this three-day meeting, 9 plenary lectures, College Chicago produced the event. Cosponsoring 10 semiplenary lectures and 10 short talks took place. organizations were the United National Educational, The first day was dedicated to the biomedical applica- Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); tions of vibrational spectroscopy. The second day, to IUPAC; Columbia College Chicago; American Chemical the physicochemical characterization of biologically Society (ACS), Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), and relevant compounds, and the third day, to the infrared Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh). spectroscopy of lipids and proteins. IUPAC’s financial support enabled the conference Plenary Sessions and Workshops organizers to cover some of the travel costs of the ple- A special feature of the conference was a series nary lecturers and also to provide grants to younger of six plenary lectures by Nobel Laureates Aaron participants, which constituted one of the most fun- Ciechanover (Israel), Richard Ernst (Switzerland), damental objectives of this meeting (to provide an Roald Hoffmann (USA), Tim Hunt (UK), Walter Kohn opportunity for young scientists to meet internation- (USA), and F. Sherwood Rowland (USA). ally recognized scientists in this field and to learn from The first plenary session was chaired by Hasan Salah them and develop their chosen professions). Dweik of Al Quds University (Palestinian Authority). In The success of the meeting encouraged the orga- his address, entitled “The Nature of Energy,” Peter nizers to consider FTIR 2007 as the first in a series Atkins (Oxford University, UK) presented an enlight- of meetings. After the event, the idea of organizing a ening overview of how the qualitative concepts of meeting in approximately two years was accepted by energy, entropy, temperature, space, and time have everyone. lead to development of the quantitative tools of ther- modynamics. Andrea Gómez-Zavaglia
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