2011 International School on Charge Density

By | October 18, 2011

The 2011 International School on Charge Density was held from the 30th August to the 4th September at the Zaragoza University Residence in Jaca, a small town located in the Pyrenees in north east Spain. The residence was a perfect location for the school and Jaca itself is very pretty with many sights and nice restaurants for evening meals.

Charge density is a rapidly expanding area of crystallography and in line with new technological and software developments is now becoming more widely accessible in home laboratories. The tutors were all leading experts in charge density and therefore the school attracted attendees from all over the world. The school was officially opened by the new IUCr President, Prof. Desiraju, who was attending the school as a student. The program for the week was very intensive with a large range of lectures introducing various aspects of charge density studies including multipole analysis, data collection details and strategies, integration, analysis and reduction of data, the Maximum-Entropy Method, the Atoms-In-Molecules approach, the use of charge density for electrostatic analysis and the use of multipole data sets for lower resolution data sets. Practical tutorial sessions (Figure 1) introduced programs used for charge density studies, including XD, MoPro, MEM, SHADE and AIM, complementing the theoretical lectures with demonstrations and the opportunity to practise using the programs. The lectures and tutorials stimulated many interesting conversations in which the tutors were more than willing to participate. A short afternoon excursion to Santa Cruz de la Seros and San Juan de la Peña, an old monastery up in the hillside (Figure 2), gave everyone a chance to relax and get to know other participants.

The opportunity to learn from experts in the field was very motivating and should give many researchers a good starting point for future work in this area. Many thanks to the organisers for the time they put into making the week so successful with such an interesting scientific program.

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