We are pleased to invite you to attend the 6th European Crystallographic School to be held between 4–10 July 2021 under the auspices of the European Crystallographic Association and International Union of Crystallography. Following the developments of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ECA and the Organizing Committee of ECS6 have decided to hold the school fully online.
We welcome participants: undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate students, postdocs, young scientists and professionals from the fields of chemistry, biology, solid state sciences who are seeking to participate on an intensive course in crystallography. The school will be useful in further academic development of the participants offering a training for new generations of crystallographers.
It is a pleasure to write that most eminent international scientists completed by excellent Hungarian researchers covering the wide field of crystallography have accepted the invitation to teach at the school. With the direction of the AKCongress, our professional conference organizer, we will use a specialised virtual conference platform where all the lectures will be available to view and it will be possible to ask the teachers through live Q&A discussion. The programme will include theoretical and practical lectures, hands-on tutorials and virtual laboratory practices, sponsor and exhibitor events, active networking and discussions as well. The educational material will be available to participants for download. Poster sessions with flash presentation opportunity will be organized to students to present their own results.
The organizers of ECS6 work hard to set up a school which can reach the success of the previous ones. The members of the Local Organizing Committee represent all institutions where crystallographic activity takes place in Hungary: Centre for Structural Science of the Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Eötvös Loránd University and Budapest University of Technology and Economics, the Wigner Research Centre for Physics, the Universities of Debrecen and Szeged. The Research Centre for Natural Sciences hosts the headquarter of the school.
We are desolated we can not personally welcome you in Budapest and enjoy your company in our magnificent city. Anyhow, formal and informal ways of online networking will be ensured throughout the school. We will provide you links where you can get familiar with the capital city of Hungary, you may take your pleasure in the virtual concert of the choir Chemical Singers, and some more social activities are planned. Later we will be pleased to welcome you personally in Budapest and show you around when travel will be safe and easy again to present the beauties of our city.
The registrations from all continents in March 2020 showed great interest toward the school when we had to decide to postpone ECS6 from year 2020 to 2021 because of the lockdown. The online registration fee in 2021 is much reduced, and participation does not require to cover travel or accommodation costs. We hope the reduced expenses give many students, interested young researchers the opportunity to participate. We also hope that we may share the time and enjoy the school with several former registrants and many new attendees.
We are very much looking forward to welcoming you at the 6th European Crystallography School, the next on-line summer crystallography school of the European Crystallographic Association.
Petra Bombicz ECS6 Chair
