Conference Call The conference, which took place at the Družba Carbohydrates Conference Center of Comenius University, had over 200 participants from 29 countries, and featured by Berit Smestad Paulsen 18 invited talks, 73 lectures, and 146 posters. The complete list of presentations is available at <www. From 27 July to 1 August 2008, the University of ssc2008.sav.sk>. Following is a sampling of the invited Oslo, Norway, was the host of the 24th International talks and speakers: Carbohydrate Symposium (ICS • What Is “Materials Chemistry”? (P. Day, UK, the 2008). The conference consisted outcomes of the IUPAC project 2005-001-1-200 of the two Whistler award lectures, —Towards Defining Materials Chemistry) nine plenary lectures, 20 invited • Multifunctionality and Switching in Magnetic lectures, 115 oral contributions, and Molecular Materials (E.M. Coronado, Spain) 400 poster presentations. There • Electrochemistry of Refractory Metals in Molten were 605 attendees from 40 coun- Salts; Application for Creation of New and tries at the conference, includ- Functional Materials (S. Kuznetsov, Russia) ing an impressive group of 140 Japanese scientists. • Ion Transfer Across a Polarized Room Temperature Other countries represented were Argentina, Australia, Ionic Liquid Membrane (Z. Samec, Czech Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, P.R. China, Czech Republic) Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Gambia, Germany, • Highly Efficient Nanocrystalline Titania Films Hungary, India, Iceland, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Korea, for Photocatalysis; Applications to Solar Energy South, Latvia, Mali, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Conversion Devices (P. Lianos, Greece) Nigeria, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United The contributions to SSC 2008 will be published Kingdom and United States. in three international journals. The authors of invited The participants ranged from talks have been officially invited by the scientific editor well-know senior scientists to of Pure and Applied Chemistry to submit manuscripts, young Ph.D. students, making with anticipated publication at the beginning of year the symposium an important 2009. In addition, lecturers will have the option of meeting place for the younger submitting manuscripts of research articles, commu- generation. nications, or reviews based upon lectures or posters The president of the to the Central European Journal of Chemistry and International Carbohydrate Chemical Papers. Organization, Mario Pinto, The 9th Conference on Solid State Chemistry began the conference with will be held in mid-September 2010 in Prague, a memorial lecture dedicated Czech Republic. A web page containing an online to the important carbohy- “expression of interest” form is already active: drate chemists and biologists <www.ssc2010.cz>. who had passed away since the last meeting. Welcome Milan Drábik <[email protected]> is a senior scientist in the Ceramics speeches were then given by Whistler award winner Department of the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, Slovak Academy of Sciences, the chair of ICS 2008, Berit Carolyn Bertozzi, USA. Bratislava, Slovak Republic. He is an associate member of Division II of IUPAC and was Smestad Paulsen, rector of the a member of the Organizing Committee of SSC 2008, as well as conference editor. University of Oslo, Geir Ellingsrud, and Knut Fægri, dean of the Mathematical and Science Faculty. Hans Peter Komadel <[email protected]>) is the head of the Department of Vliegenhart greeted the participants on behalf of Silicates, Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, IUPAC. Slovak Republic. He is president of the Slovak Clay Group and was chairman of the The International Carbohydrate Organization estab- organizing committee of SSC 2008. lished in 1984 an award in honor of Professor Roy L. Whistler to recognize scientists “who have made Tomáš Grygar <[email protected]> is head of the Analytical Laboratory at the contributions of excellence in carbohydrate chemistry Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, Academy of Sciences of Czech Republic. He is a and biochemistry and with promise of continuing sig- member of the organizing committee of SSC 2010. nificant contributions”. This award is always presented CHEMISTRY International November-December 2008 27 Conference Call following the Opening Ceremony of the symposium. In systems. Analytical and bioassay methods for struc- 2008 the award was given to two outstanding scien- ture activity studies were also presented. tists within the carbohydrate world: Carolyn Bertozzi and Yukishige Ito. Berit Smestad Paulsen <[email protected]> is a professor at the School of Bertozzi is the leader in applying organic chemis- Pharmacy, University of Oslo, Blindern, Oslo, Norway. try in living systems, most specifically for the study of glycosylation. To this end she has designed ele- Organic Synthesis gant chemical methods to introduce labelled unnatural by Sung Ho Kang compounds into the cellu- lar biosynthetic machinery, The 17th International Conference on Organic thereby allowing for a wide Synthesis (ICOS 17), which was held in Daejeon, Korea, range of studies to moni- from 22–27 June 2008 at the newly opened Daejeon tor changes in glycosylation Convention Center, drew more than 1 000 participants, in tissues and cells. Her cell including 412 scientists from 32 countries. Considering surface engineering makes the many thousands of practitioners of organic and an essential contribution to organic-related chemical sciences in Korea, it was biomedicine with a broad surprising that in its 30+ year history this conference impact at the chemistry to had never been held on the Peninsula until this year. biology interface. The citizens and chemical professionals of Korea, and Ito’s contributions cover of Daejeon, were grateful to finally host this extremely the chemical synthesis of important professional meeting. Whistler award winner Yukishige Ito, Japan. glycoconjugates for biologi- The organizers of ICOS-17 decided to hold the con- cal investigations, including ference in Daejon because they felt its “Science Town” novel synthetic methods of development. He has district would stimulate and encourage professionals made distinguished contributions in many areas; of and help motivate more young students in Korea and exceptional note are methods developed for alpha Asia to consider to the field of organic synthesis. sialoside and beta mannoside linkages and the synthe- ICOS-17 offered expanded coverage of subjects from sis of some enormously complex molecules. His funda- previous conferences with a different presentation for- mental synthetic work on all aspect of large N-glycans mat. The conference topics were grouped as follows: makes it possible to focus in a very systematic way on 1. Discovery of New Reagents and Reactions the processing and quality control of glycoproteins in 2. Challenges and New Trends in Natural Products the cell, thereby clarifying key enzymes and chaper- Synthesis ones at the molecular level. Bjørn Erik Christensen, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway, was in charge of the scientific program of the sym- posium, which covered most aspects of carbohydrate chemistry: • synthesis • analysis • glycobiology, glycomedicine, glycomics • therapeutics, new materials, and bionanotechnology • polysaccharides—structure, functions, applications • industrial applications of carbohydrates ICOS-17 organizers with conference co-chairs Eun Lee and The plenary and oral session presentations ranged Sunggak Kim. (from left) Hee-Seung Lee, Guncheol Kim, from biosynthesis of new bioactive oligosaccharides Hong-Seok Kim, Sung Ho Kang, Eun Lee, Sunggak Kim, to structural elucidation of polysaccharides from vari- Hyo-Won Lee, Hyun-Joon Ha, Han-Young Kang, Hee-Yoon ous sources to their bioactive functions in different cell Lee. 28 CHEMISTRY International November-December 2008.