And just like that, we are at the start of December, and I’m writing my last President’s Column for RefleXions. I find it hard to believe how quickly the year went by. It has been an honour to serve you all as President during our 75th Anniversary year. This year has been one of ups and downs, challenges and opportunities, and was highlighted by our Annual Meeting in Lombard.
We recently completed our 2025 elections, and I would like to thank everyone who had stepped up to have their names stand for election for various offices and SIGs. We are a volunteer led organization; your dedication to our society is greatly appreciated and does not go unnoticed. Congratulations to all those who were elected. On Council, we have our incoming Vice-President, Ashfia Huq, and Brian Patrick is our incoming Canadian Representative, replacing Sara Andres. I look forward to working with you both. To our Immediate Past President, Allen Oliver, who is rolling off Council at the end of December, thank you. You have served our community with grace and an ever-ready smile. To our incoming President, Danielle Gray, I am looking forward to helping you in your 2026 term as we continue to strengthen our community, and to celebrate the IUCr Congress coming back to North America. We are certainly in good hands with you at the helm. Thank you to everyone on Council: Sara Andres, Kenneth Childers, Stephan Ginell, Kushol Gupta, Stephan Ginell, Thomas Proffen, and Nick Sauter for your time and energy in making my term as President such a rewarding one. And, of course, a big thank you to our ACA Headquarters Team, Kristin Stevens, Kristina Vitale, and Claire Deal, for all their hard work in the background keeping us moving forward together as a Society.
In October, I had the opportunity to represent our ACA community at the 7th Latin American Crystallographic Association and 27th Brazilian Crystallographic Association (LACA-ABCr 2025), in Fortaleza, Brazil. For those interested, I posted a few reflections of the meeting on the ACA Blog. It was a great meeting, highlighting the excellent structural science being engaged in across the Americas. There is a vibrant structural science community across the Americas, and I hope that we can all look forward to strengthening connections with colleagues across the ACA and LACA regions.
Please take the time to renew your ACA membership for 2026, which keeps our society healthy. We have several members who have already renewed for 2026, and many other who are on auto-renew, which I extend our thanks to. Maintaining your membership provides important connections and updates on the community at large, through things like the ACA Blog and Community Forum. ACA members also get a significant discount on publication charges in Structural Dynamics, the ACA’s open access journal. Please consider exploring and contributing to these important community resources and submitting your next publication to Structural Dynamics.
With 2026 being an IUCr year with the Congress being held in North America, we don’t have a separate Annual Meeting; the IUCr Congress will be that meeting, and we will have several ACA-centric events planned. We will look to keep members informed on these as we lead up to the start of Congress on August 11, 2026. I would leave you with a few important dates to remember. These are: February 15, 2026, which is the deadline for abstract submissions, March 31, 2026, the early registration deadline, and July 1, 2026, the hotel block reservation deadline (its June 25th if you are planning on staying in the University of Calgary’s dormitories). You can stay up to date on the IUCr 2026 congress through the website and social media channels such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and BlueSky. The BMO Centre is great venue for the meeting, and city is fantastic. Calgary sits a nexus of the prairies, foothills and the Rocky Mountains; there is truly something for everyone to see and do in addition to the excellent program that the IPC has put together for the meeting itself. I hope that you will join me and your colleagues in Calgary to showcase the excellent science and strong structural science community that is the ACA.
Once again, thank you all for making the ACA such a vibrant and welcoming community. It has been an honour to serve as your President. I look forward to seeing everyone in Calgary in August 2026.
Gerald F. Audette
PS. I would be remiss if I did not take this one last opportunity to provide the community with a picture of “Crystals in the Wild” … Okay it’s a photo I took at an amethyst mine just east of Thunder Bay, Ontario, this past July. Of course, as we all know, amethyst is a purple/violet variety of trigonal (P3221) quartz (SiO2). The fun part of the mine visit was the hunting for the amethyst itself – breaking a few rocks and seeing what you find. I did find a few nice specimens, which means my collection is growing, and visitors could buy others from those the mine itself found if they so chose. Enjoy structures and crystals wherever you find them! - GFA
