Prof. Vladislav Blatov and Dr. Eugeny Alexandrov took part in the XXIV Congress and General Assembly of the International Union of Crystallography 2017 (IUCr). The Congress was held in Hyderabad International Convention Center on August 21-28, 2017.The Congress attracted 1700 participants, 600 of them presented oral contributions including three keynote lectures of world known crystallographers Susumu Kitagawa, John C. H. Spence и Giacomo Chiari, 40 presentations of keynote speakers invited by the organizing committee as the leading experts in certain fields of science and 600 session reports.
Prof. Blatov was the only Russian keynote speaker of the Congress scientific program, he delivered the lecture «Topological approach for the design of new materials». “I consider the invitation to the Congress as the evidence that topological methods being developed by our research team are recognized by the International Union of Crystallography as key methods in crystal chemistry and materials science, - Vladislav Blatov says. – These fields of science attract more and more researchers, our communication with the participants confirmed that”.
Dr. Eugeny Alexandrov made the oral contribution «Multilevel topological analysis in application to design of coordination networks». He presented four fields of topological analysis application for coordination networks, in particular, the analysis of malonate complexes, rod metal-organic building units and the recommendations for design of such compounds, topology of entanglements in layered coordination networks, and design of metal-organic nanotubes, that attracted the most interest.
On August 25, 2017 within the special session for presentations of software used in Crystallography the ToposPro software package and TORIS client application were presented to the participants. The TORIS is a client application intended for work with the topological service that provides remote access to the information stored in the databases. It is a tool with a graphical user interface, which allows you to enter the data for analysis, send them to the service and view the service responses.
The General Assembly program included elections and creations of the IUCr commissions. Prof. Blatov became a member of two commissions: the Commission for Theoretical Crystallography and Mathematical Methods in Crystallography - MathCryst and the Commission for Crystallography of Materials. “As part of my work in the first commission, - says Prof. Blatov. – We will hold a scientific school in the newly opened research center in Guanghua (China). The center is established within Chinese program “Material Genome Initiative (MGI)” and aimed at designing new materials. The school will be held jointly with Xian University and the Russian-Chinese Research Center which is currently being established by SCTMS”. SCTMS continues cooperating with the International Center for Diffraction Data (ICDD) and the major American database on crystal structures. At the meeting in Hyderabad Prof. Blatov, the Chairman of ICDD Matteo Leoni, the Executive director Tom Blanton and the Database Editor-in-Chief Dr. Soorya Kabekkodu discussed the results of joint work and took the decision to cooperate on permanent basis. “Our colleagues are entirely satisfied with the work conducted by SCTMS, - Vladislav Blatov comments. - They assured that our methods are of great importance for them. The cooperation details between ICDD and SCTMS will appear on the agenda of the ICDD board meeting in September”.
The negotiations with the IUCr members on modernization of crystal structure data presentation format (CIF) were initiated. “We offer to include information on topology and topological properties of crystals into the format, - Prof. Blatov explains. – Our software already can present and read information in the modernized format, but it hasn’t become official yet”. By demand of IUCr members working on the format, SCTMS researchers are preparing proposals for discussion by the IUCr commission and inclusion of topology into CIF library.
Moreover, Prof. Blatov and Dr. Alexandrov held the meetings with scientists from Russia, Germany, USA, Netherlands, and India who already use or intend to use SCTMS software. They established some new scientific contacts, which may lead to joint research projects and works.
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