Powder diffraction sig Report 2006

The Powder Diffraction SIG elected Thomas Proffen from Los Alamos National Laboratory as Chair for 2007.  An amendment to our constitution was also passed which eliminates the secretary position, and establishes that the activities of this SIG shall be administered by an Executive Committee of three officers elected by members of the SIG. The officers of the Executive Committee shall be Chairperson, Chairperson-Elect and Past-Chairperson.

For the 2006 ACA meeting in Honolulu, we jointly organized five half-day sessions:  13.03 PDF Analysis of Industrially Relevant Materials (with Industrial and Materials SIGs), 13.04 Latest Advancements in Detector Technology for Synchrotron X-ray & Neutron Diffraction Instrumentation (with Neutron Scattering SIG), 13.12 Metal-Organic Hybrids- Crystal Engineering (with Small Molecule and Materials SIGs), 13.13 Exploring Structures from the Near Neighbor to the Nanometer Scale Using Pair Distribution Function Analysis and Small Angle Scattering (with Materials and Small Angle Scattering SIGs), and 13.15 Science at X-ray and Neutron Facilities Around the Pacific Rim (with Neutron Scattering SIG).  Session 13.04 on Detectors had to be canceled due to lack of interest from contributed abstracts.  Session 13.15 on the neutron and synchrotron facilities was inadvertently left off of the program initially posted on the meeting web site, so contributors were not aware of it.  Nevertheless, we were able to salvage the session by drawing speakers from the contributed abstracts in related sessions.  These sessions included 25 oral presentations and 6 poster presentations. Summaries of the sessions will be prepared for inclusion in the Fall ACA newsletter. The Powder Diffraction SIG sessions at the Honolulu meeting received financial support from the ACA and the International Centre for Diffraction Data (ICDD).  The $1000 from the ICDD was used to help pay travel expenses for 3 students.

At the Neutron Scattering SIG meeting held in Honolulu, we discussed candidates for SIG Chair-elect for the Fall 2006 election process and the nature of the topical sessions that we would organize for the 2007 ACA meeting in Salt Lake City.   The candidates for the SIG Chair-elect were agreed upon to be Ashfia Huq (ORNL) and Cora Lind (University of Toledo).  

The Powder Diffraction SIG is always concerned about making sure that its sessions and related ones are scheduled to avoid concurrent sessions at future ACA meetings, because this adversely affects our session attendance.

Bryan Chakoumakos

Powder Diffraction SIG Chair, 2006

kou@ornl.gov