The beginning of September is always something I look forward to. While it is a soft goodbye to summer, sitting under a tree on a warm fall afternoon with the leaves changing colors and reading something interesting has been something I’ve enjoyed for many years. Perhaps it will be the e-version of RefleXions for me this year :). And of course, for those of us in the academic sector, it is the start of the new fall academic term, with our campuses abuzz with new and returning students. I wish you all the best on the start of autumn, a new semester, and new or ongoing scientific pursuits.
While I personally had a very busy summer, the highlight for me was certainly our Annual Meeting in Lombard. I want to take a moment to thank our Headquarters team and volunteers for getting the meeting organized and running, and for that highly memorable boat cruise to end out meeting on a high note. To our Meeting Committee, thank you for organizing a great series of sessions, full of scientific discovery, excellent discussions, and the tour of the APS organized (while I missed it, I hear it was an excellent showcase of the revitalized APS after their “dark period” of upgrades). To our vendors and corporate partners, thank you for your continued support of our community and helping make our meeting such a success. Thank you to all session chairs, our poster chair and judges, and presenters, speakers and poster presenters, for making to the scientific program such a success.
I am looking forward to reading the session summaries from our Lombard meeting which will be published on the ACA website soon; with so many excellent sessions I find I cannot get to all the sessions I hope to. I would spare a few words to mention some highlights from the meeting for me. First, thank you to Stephen Burley for a great start to our meeting with his keynote address. To our 2025 ACA Award Winners, Dmitry Lyumkis, Craig Brown, Chris Maliakas, Branton Campbell and Harold Stokes, congratulations and thank you for such inspiring presentations. We also announced our 2026 Award Winners in Lombard, and these can be found in our ACA blog. To our 2025 Class of ACA Fellows: Graciela Carlota Diaz de Delgado, Zygmunt Derewenda, Tamir Gonen, Igor Levin, Zbyszek Otwinowski, Sean Parkin, Bernie Santarsiero, Charlotte Stern, and Kraig Wheeler, congratulations. It was an honor to welcome you as Fellows. And lastly, thank you to all community members whom I had the pleasure to interact with during the meeting. Our community is truly a lively, welcoming, and engaging one.
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We are now turning our focus onto the upcoming IUCr 2026 Congress in Calgary, Canada. As I have noted in previous columns, the ACA, the Canadian National Committee for Crystallography and the American Union of Crystallography (AUC, formerly the US National Committee for Crystallography) are co-hosting the 27th IUCr Congress. That means that our 2026 annual meeting will be the IUCr Congress in Calgary, and our Headquarters team are working hard on the organization of the meeting. Thank you again to our SIGs and all that attended our SIG meetings earlier than normal this year to organize proposals for sessions that were submitted to the IUCr commissions for consideration by the International Program Committee (IPC).
The IPC has worked diligently to organized microsymposia with the suggestions put forward by the IUCr commissions, and the call for abstracts is now open! Stay up to date on the IUCr 2026 congress through the website and social media channels such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and BlueSky. I encourage everyone to attend the attend next year’s IUCr Congress, and to encourage your colleagues to do so. If you’re attending a content-related meeting, we encourage you to share a warm welcome with our international colleagues and invite them to join us for the 2026 Congress. The success of the IUCr 2026 is our collective success and a exciting opportunity to showcase the ACA and Structural Science in North America.
We are moving into autumn, and with it our 2025 ACA elections. I encourage everyone to keep an eye out for the email from the ACA regarding elections and to have your voice heard by voting. Please take time to read our candidates’ statements and register your vote. We are a volunteer-based organization; thank you to all who agreed to stand for election and help move our community forward with your enthusiasm and talents.
Our 2026 ACA Awards are open for nominations. In 2026, we are celebrating the Bertram Eugene Warren Diffraction Physics Award, the M.J. Buerger Award, and the Margaret C. Etter Early Career Award. Please consider nominating a deserving colleague for recognition; the deadline for receipt of nomination packages at ACA HQ is April 1, 2026. Details of the awards and nominations process can be found on the ACA Awards page on our website.
I would also remind everyone that membership renewal is coming up. I encourage everyone to renew their memberships, even if you are not planning on attending the Calgary meeting. We have a lot to offer our members and community, and we count on our continued memberships to keep our society healthy.
As we know, a core of the ACA is to “advance, promote, and preserve crystallography, structural science, and allied disciplines for the benefit of humankind” (it’s our Mission Statement). In advancing this mission of the ACA, we support the History Portal and the Video Library. Please consider contributing to these important community resources. We are also highly supportive of our Young Scientists, and I would direct members to the Young Scientist Spotlight and Young Scientist Spotlight Pop-Up, where rising stars in structural science are given the opportunity to speak about their research outside of the annual meeting. We are working, well Allen Oliver and the Education Committee is (thanks!), on getting our Spotlight Pop-Ups available through the Video Library. And if you’re into a bit of Canadian content, the CNCC, through the efforts of Storm Dragonson (formerly Matthew Brown), has organized the Penny Codding Lecture Series (Penny was ACA President in 1998) in a similar vein to our Young Scientist Pop-Up. We are hoping to similarly archive these lectures in the ACA Video Library, and the Education Committee is looking into the possibility. I encourage everyone to consider suggesting a Young Scientist for a Spotlight Pop-Up or, if they have a Canadian connection, a Codding Lecture, and attending these lectures to hear what our next generation of structural scientists are up to where they’re going.
I would be remiss if I did not remind everyone of the many ways to connect with our community through the ACA, including ACA Blog, Community Forum, and of course our society’s journal, Structural Dynamics. Please consider exploring and contributing to these important community resources.
As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments. We on Council are here for you and our community. You can reach out to me at [email protected] or through the Contact Us link on the ACA website.
Wishing you a bright and beautiful autumn!
Gerald F. Audette
York University, Toronto, CA
