International Union Of Crystallography

The iucr holds a congress and general assembly for crystallographers every three years. The congress is the major international scientific meeting for crystallographers worldwide. The main programme usually lasts for more than a week, with satellite meetings, schools and workshops being arranged just before or after it, usually in nearby locations. The congress includes three sessions of the general assembly at which the policies of the union are approved and applied, officers and members of the executive committee are elected and the membership of the twenty-one iucr scientific commissions is ratified for the next triennium. The general assembly also selects the venue for the next-but-one congress. At the congress, the iucr awards the ewald prize for outstanding contributions to the science of crystallography and, starting in 2021, awarded the w.h. And w.l. Bragg prize to promising early career crystallographers. The iucr president's fund provides funds to assist financially disadvantaged senior scientists from developing countries to attend the iucr congresses.

The iucr africa initiative was launched in 1999 and since then the iucr has put enormous effort into developing opportunities for education and research and building capacity in crystallography in the african continent. To coincide with the united nations international year of crystallography in 2014, the iucr launched a major outreach and education initiative, which lead to the appointment of an executive outreach officer to co-ordinate the iucr's outreach and education efforts around the world. The iucr is partnering with unesco on a series of open labs in developing countries, with the aim of nurturing sustainable crystallography groups, and with the international science council and the international union of pure and applied physics to create the lightsources for africa, the americas, asia and middle east project (laaamp). Laaamp aims to enhance advanced light sources (adls) and crystallographic sciences in africa, the middle east, se asia, mexico and the caribbean. By doing so, the regions' peoples will benefit from the research that will tackle such devastating viruses as zika, ebola and hiv. Moreover, considerable progress will be achieved towards sustainable sources of clean energy. Each year the iucr sub-committee on the union calendar considers applications for financial support from schools and workshops around the world. The iucr provides more than usd 100k per year to enable young scientists to attend supported events and also pays the travel costs for visiting professors from other parts of the region to attend the schools to lecture and provide mentorship.

To advance the science of crystallography