EUROMAR · European Experimental Magnetic Resenance Conference 2005

Final Activity Report Summary - EUROMAR (European Experimental Magnetic Resenance Conference 2005)

The European magnetic-resonance community is moving towards an integration of magnetic resonance conferences in Europe. Ampee, EENC and UK NMR-DG Committees are working together for joining their meetings into one common annual series. A way-point in this development was the 18th EENC /EUROMAR 3-8 July 2005 in Veldhoven, The Netherlands, which was organised under the auspices of the EENC International Organising Committee with support from the Ampere and UK NMR-DG Committees. Full details on the meeting are available at http://www.eenc2005.org/. More than 500 scientists took part in this conference, which was made especially attractive for young scientists by offering fellowships, fee reductions, workshops and guided poster tours, and by offering several contributed lecture slots to young scientists. The workshops and guided poster tours constituted new elements in magnetic resonance conferences in Europe. Some 50 young scientists were fully supported with a Marie-Curie fellowship from the Commission of the European Communities. Another 80 received a 50% grant towards their registration and subsistence costs from the donations by the large vendors of NMR equipment. Grants for reduced registration costs for students were also made possible by this generous support of some 22 vendors of NMR related equipment, operational supplies and literature, and 9 Dutch companies and scientific organisations. The major part of the program consisted of a broad representative spectrum of 12 plenary lectures by internationally renowned lecturers and some 80 lectures in parallel sessions on novel developments in both liquid- and solid-state NMR spectroscopy, as well as MR imaging, relaxometry and EPR spectroscopy, covering a broad range of topics in (systems and structural) biology, materials- and nano-science, and metabolomics. On Tuesday morning Malcolm Levitt received the Ampere prize for his work on recoupling pulse-sequences in MAS NMR. The Andrew prize was awarded to Christian Hilty for his membrane-protein NMR studies, and the Russell-Varian prize to Nico Bloembergen for his seminal contribution on NMR relaxation theory. The acceptance lectures from the prize winners were very well received indeed. The over 300 posters presented in the large exhibition hall, at the heart of the conference site, were well visited and many lively discussions took place in front of the posters until deep in the evening with refreshments, offered through the hospitality activities of the major vendors, in the hand. The unique facilities at the Koningshof, in which the hotel and conference venue are all under one roof, and the generous social and hospitality arrangements made for intensive interaction between all participants. Novel elements in the Conference were the five workshops with all-together close to 200 participants: Average Hamiltonian Theory (Vosegaard / Brinkmann), Multivariate analysis of NMR data (Dyrby), Structure Generation and Validation (Vuister, Spronk, Hermann), Alignment and orientation (Parigi / Zweckstetter) and Computation of NMR parameters (Sklenar / van Lenthe / Kaupp). The workshops took place in an enthusiastic atmosphere of both teachers and participants, and the classes practically always exceeded the two scheduled sessions of some two hours on Sunday and Monday. There was also much interest for another novel element, the guided poster tours, in which established researchers guided groups of up to 12 young scientists to 5 - 7 posters that illustrated particular new developments. Some 150 scientists took part in these tours. The 18th EENC / EUROMAR was successful in bringing together the European magnetic-resonance community in a pleasant atmosphere with a vivid exchange of scientific ideas, and the start of new co-operations. At the conference it was decided by the joint committees that from 2006 onwards the three bi-annual international conferences of the EENC, the Colloque Ampee and the UK NMR-DG will be merged into one annual EUROMAR conference, of which the next one in the series will be organized in York in 2006.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union