Vol. 28 No. 1
January-February 2006

Solution Chemistry

by Vojko Vlachy

Professor Jean-Marie Lehn during his plenary lecture “From Supramolecular Chemistry to Constitutional Dynamic Chemistry.”

The 29th International Conference on Solution Chemistry (ICSC) was held in Portoroz, Slovenia, 20–25 August 2005. The conference was organized by the faculty of chemistry and chemical technology at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
The ICSC has been held biannually since 1967 and under the present name since 1988. The meetings, which have been held in locations ranging from Debrecen to Vaals and from Fukuoka to Vichy, are organized by a 10-member international steering committee. The present chairman of the committee is Professor Ingmar Persson from the University of Uppsala in Sweden.

The 29th ICSC was sponsored by IUPAC, and IUPAC representative Hitoshi Ohtaki gave a speech at the opening ceremony. Other guests at the opening ceremony were Bijoy Chatterjee from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and Franci Demšar, director of the Slovenian Research Agency.

The theme of the conference was “the chemistry of solutions,” but sessions were also held on supramolecular assemblies and nanostructures, interfaces, biophysical and pharmaceutical problems, aquatic chemistry, and others. In addition, a roundtable discussion on ionic liquids was held, sponsored by Merck. Andreas Heintz chaired the discussion, and the main contributors were Josef Barthel, Urs Welz-Biermann (Merck), Hartmut Krienke, and Chris Hardacre.

A broad array of eminent scientists from around the world gave presentations and keynote lectures; a complete list can be found at <www.icsc2005.si>. The conference program also included 69 20-minute oral contributions and two poster sessions, with 160 posters in total. Moderated discussions followed each poster presentations, and each participant or group had an opportunity to show the conclusions of their study in a few slides and discuss them with the audience. An ad hoc committee chaired by Josef Barthel selected the most interesting posters, which received diplomas and practical awards. The recipients were:

• Yasuo Kameda and coworkers from Yamagata University, Japan
• Sylvia E. McLain, Rutherford Appleton Lab, United Kingdom
• Mónika Valiskó and coworkers from the University of Veszprem, Hungary
• Andrew W. Hakin, University of Lethbridge, Canada, and Harald Høiland, University of Bergen, Norway

An exhibition of scientific instruments included the participation of MicroCal LLC (United States), Mettler-Toledo (Slovenia), Merck (Germany), Sanolabor (Slovenia), and Anton Paar (Austria).
Altogether, the ICSC hosted almost 300 participants from 36 countries, including approximately 50 Ph.D. students who took advantage of the conference’s reduced fees for students, and more than 40 accompanying family members.

The conference organizers made strong efforts to secure funds for participants from economically less developed countries; in fact, the organizing committee fully supported more than 30 participants and provided reduced fees for 25 others. This support would not have been possible without generous donations from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, IUPAC, and the Slovenian Research Agency. The conference organizers are also grateful for many other donors and sponsors, particularly general sponsor Lek, a new Sandoz company from Ljubljana, Slovenia.

The 30th ICSC will take place in Perth, Australia, 16–20 July 2007; for more information, go to <www.icsc30.murdoch.edu.au>.

Dr. Vojko Vlachy served as chairman of the organizing committee of the 29th ICSC. He is currently a professor of chemistry and chemical technology at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, as well as an adjunct professor at the University of California, San Francisco campus, United States.

www.icsc2005.si