Professor Vladislav Blatov took part in the 2017 Spring Meetings of the International Centre for Diffraction Data (ICDD, USA). His participation has resulted in preliminary agreement on inclusion of topological information into databases of ICDD and Prof. Blatov’s membership in the ICDD.Annual ICDD Spring Meetings were held on March 13-17 at the ICDD Headquarters (Newtown, Pennsylvania, USA). During 4-5 days, ICDD members exchanged ideas and information of participants’ scientific interests, discussed development plans, rules and policies of ICDD. The International Centre for Diffraction Data was founded in 1941 and changed its name several times. The ICDD is dedicated to collecting, editing, publishing, and distributing powder diffraction data for all known chemical compounds. At present, ICDD database - the Powder Diffraction File™ (PDF®) is the world’s largest database of such type.
Prof. Blatov’s lecture «Topological information in crystallography and crystal chemistry: a route to knowledge databases» aroused a considerable discussion and a keen interest in topological methods in materials science being developed by SCTMS. The participants asked numerous questions about databases containing correlations between theoretical and experimental data on crystalline structures for prediction of new matters and materials, and about application experience of the databases and ToposPro software package.
An essential result of Vladislav Blatov’s participation in the ICDD Spring Meetings is his accession to the ICDD membership. Over 300 scientists from around the world comprise the active membership in the ICDD.
“As a member of the ICDD I have an opportunity to work with its structural divisions and come up with proposals, - Vladislav Blatov comments, - I also expect that we will work on topological part of the ICDD database and will make a considerable or even an exclusive contribution to the database”.
The preliminary agreement with the ICDD on expanding the Powder Diffraction File with topological data is a notable breakthrough, as SCTMS will cooperate with the world center for quality diffraction and related data.
In the photo: ICDD Plenary speakers Luca Lutterotti (Italy), Vladislav Blatov (Russia), Hideo Toraya (Japan), Justin Blanton (U.S.A.)