I recently had the opportunity to attend the 7^th Latin American Crystallographic Association and 27^th Brazilian Crystallographic Association (LACA-ABCr 2025), which was held between October 14-17, 2025, in Fortaleza, Brazil. I was looking forward to this meeting for some time and learning more of research across the structural sciences community in the broader Americas.

The LACA-ABCr meeting was held at the Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC), Fortaleza, Brazil, and was preceded by two days (Oct. 13-14) of workshops (the LACA-ABCr School) on small molecule structure determination and fragment screening for drug discovery. In addition, LACA-ABCr was also preceded by the 1^st Latin American Powder Diffraction Conference (LAPDic 2025), held between October 11-14, 2025. One of the Plenary lectures at LAPDiC was given by the Simon Billinge (Columbia University, 2018 B.E. Warren Diffraction Award) and another by Stefan Kycia (University of Guelph); while I did not attend LAPDiC 2025, I understand that it was an excellent meeting. The LACA-ABCr opening session overlapped with the LAPDiC closing with a plenary talk from Irene Margiolaki (University of Patras, Greece) on XRPD studies protein and peptide powders; it was an excellent segue between the meetings highlighting the versatility of structural science in studying various systems.

The LACA-ABCr 2025 meeting had over 200 attendees from 19 countries, mainly from the LACA region plus a few of us from other international locales. This is of course smaller in size than our ACA annual meetings, however the atmosphere was welcoming and friendly. The meeting itself was organized with a single morning session consisting of several scientific talks spanning the structural science landscape and one or two technical talks from the sponsoring vendors. The afternoon sessions were split into parallel focused microsymposia and ending with coffee and a poster session. Being a BioMac type, my afternoons were engaged in the macromolecular sessions, however all sessions were well attended, with excellent science and discussions. There was a very strong support for early career scientists, and I had many engaging conversations with colleagues and trainees outside the talks and at the posters (myself trying my hand at a few words in Portuguese, and their speaking much better in English). The LACA-ABCr social event was at a local venue with lots of food, beverages (the local speciality, the Caipirinha, was a popular choice), and friendships being made and renewed. The community is vibrant and very welcoming.

Promoting science crossing borders at the IUCr booth with (left to right):  Gerald Audette (Canada), Graciella Diaz de Delgado (Venezuela), Jennifer Skade (IUCr, UK), Irene Margiolaki (Greece), and Kezia Bowman (IUCr, UK).

I was kindly invited by the organizers to provide a keynote talk at the end of the meeting, where I took the opportunity to introduce our LACA colleagues to the ACA, structural science in the North American context, and to preview and invite all attendees to the upcoming IUCr2026 Congress in Calgary, Canada, in August 2026. Of course, “Calgary Cal” (#WhereIsCal) made an appearance; indeed, Calgary Cal was a hit at the opening celebration and the IUCr 2026 booth was very active. Importantly, I was also able to celebrate the election of Graciella Diaz de Delgado as a 2025 ACA Fellow (Graciella was unable to join us at our 2025 Meeting in Lombard) with the LACA community.

Many thanks to the Organizers and Vendors/Sponsors of LACA-ABCr 2025 for a great meeting. From Left to Right: Pierre Le Magueres (Rigaku Americas), Amy Kennedy (Oxford Cryosystems) and Gerald Audette.

I would like to extend a very big thank you to the LACA-ABCr organizing committee, led by Program Chair Alejandro Ayala (Dept. of Physics, UFC) for their hard work in getting this meeting together. A large thank you to the vendors and sponsors for the meeting; their support was critical to the success of the meeting. And thanks to the IUCr2026 team for being a meeting sponsor; our booth was well attended, and Calgary Cal was a hit.

#CalgaryCal enjoying some local art (left) in Fortaleza, Brazil, before the LACA-ABCr2025 meeting, and taking in the session on Structural Science at the Sirius synchrotron light source (right).

To my ACA colleagues, if you are looking to broaden their structural science horizons, consider a LACA meeting. It was an excellent meeting, and I am certainly looking forward to attending another LACA meeting in the future.

By: Gerald Audette