Editorial: Conference calls

Conferences are the lifeblood of any collaborative science, and the past month has seen two excellent meetings that highlighted the best in chemistry from both sides of the Atlantic.

The American Chemical Society’s Fall meeting in San Francisco, California, was a typically enormous affair. Officials estimate that more than 15,000 scientists descended on the conference centre and surrounding hotels to sample almost 10,000 presentations and posters.

Two weeks earlier, the First European Chemistry Congress drew about 3000 scientists to the Hungarian capital of Budapest - riven by violent political protests as Chemistry World  went to press, but eminently hospitable at the time.

This was the first meeting organised by the European Association for Chemical and Molecular Sciences (EuCheMS), created in 2004 as an umbrella body for some 50 member societies in 35 countries across Europe - including the RSC. Born from the Federation of European Chemical Societies and Professional Institutions, it aims to provide a powerful single voice for the chemical sciences in Europe. On the evidence of its first conference, it is doing so admirably. Chemistry World has devoted substantial coverage to both meetings this month.

Moreover, the Budapest meeting was just the right size to enable the sort of networking that keeps chemistry vibrant. Having long breaks between sessions, and holding lectures in a geographically concentrated area, allowed scientists from many different disciplines to interact. The resulting cross-fertilisation of ideas is essential to tackle some of the overarching challenges for today’s chemists, including fuel production and environmental sustainability. No single group can solve these problems alone.

But many scientists acknowledge that the sheer size of the ACS meeting can sometimes make it difficult to break away from their own relatively narrow subject area. With a 20 minute hike separating some lectures, it’s almost impossible to flit from one subject to another to sample the talks with the tastiest-sounding titles.

Interdisciplinary challenges, such as developing carbon-neutral energy sources, can only be solved if the polymer people can drop in on the catalysis sessions once in a while, or hang out with some theoretical chemists on a whim. But if these groups are stuck on opposite sides of a city centre, there’s simply less opportunity for serendipitous encounters.

Conferences provide one of the best opportunities for scientists to establish new collaborations, and EuCheMS itself shows what can be achieved in the same spirit of collaboration. Its next conference will take place in Turin, Italy, in September 2008.

Both meetings proved to be the perfect opportunity to test drive the new Chemistry World blog. For the web-savvy chemist, blogs are yet another way to collaborate with colleagues all over the world. While some discuss the daily grind of bench work, others provide a forum to exchange ideas about tackling future research problems. For those unfamiliar with chemistry blogs, there’s no better place to start than our own, which also allows feedback and discussion of our daily online news stories. Just think of it as a virtual conference that runs 365 days a year. 

Mark Peplow, editor