Back to the NewsLetter

The ECTN held a management committee meeting on 20 September 2008 in Turin, Italy at the Lingotto Conference Centre where the 2nd EUCheMS Chemistry Congress was being held.

Some important points to come from this meeting and not mentioned in other parts of this newsletter are the following:

The Tuning Chemistry brochure has now been published by the Tuning project. Many copies were distributed to participants at the EUCheMS congress. A copy will be given to all ECTN partners at the Poznan plenary meeting of the ECTN. If you would like a copy before this you can download one from the ECTN website, or ask Tony Smith to send you a copy.

The ECTN will be a co-organiser of a Summer School aimed mainly at PhD students and Post-docs, provisionally entitled ‘Molecular and Supramolecular Approach to Nano-Designed Catalysts’. The co-organisers are IDECAT, a European research network of excellence, and inGAP, a catalysis research centre appointed by the Research Council of Norway. The Summer School will take place in Trondheim, Norway 21 – 27 June 2009. There will be ECTN funding for PhD students from ECTN member institutions to attend this Summer School. Details will be circulated to all member institutions shortly.

There will also be a Summer School organised by the Newly Appointed University Chemistry Teachers working group (leader: Paul Yates, Keele University, UK). This summer school will receive some funding from the ECTN Association.

The Chemistry and Cultural Heritage working group (leader: Evangelia Varella, Thessaloniki, GR) has obtained funding for the next three years from the European Commission to hold summer schools. Thus there will also be a summer school in this area in 2009.

Summer 2009 will be a busy time for ECTN members!

The on-line learning tool, Advanced Professional English for Chemists is progressing well. A demonstration version will be available at the Poznan meeting. ECTN members will have free access to this learning tool.

The ECTN applied for an Erasmus Mundus Action 4 project to internationalise the ECTN. We have not yet heard the result of this application but this should be known very shortly.

The meeting discussed the evaluation report of the Helsinki plenary meeting provided by Prof. Elio Santacesaria. Account of the points made in this report will be taken on board with the aim of making the next meeting in Poznan an even greater success.

You should all have the dates of the Poznan meeting in your diaries. The meeting starts with a reception in the evening of Wednesday, 15 April 2009 and ends at lunchtime on Saturday 18 April. The website for this meeting will be published shortly. For TASSEP members, it is expected that the TASSEP meeting will take place in the afternoon of 18 April. The management committee has selected a number of very exciting plenary lectures/lecturers for this meeting. The names will be revealed when the website is published. But please make sure you find the time to come to the meeting, you will not be disappointed.

The final conference of the ECTN4 project will take place in Dresden, DE on the evening of Tuesday 8th September 2009 and end on the evening of Thursday 10th September. Planning for this meeting is well advanced. Make sure you keep these dates free in your diary.

The ECTN4 project comes to an end on 30th September 2009. After that we very much hope that there will be an ECTN5 project. The application for this project will be sent to the European Commission before the deadline of 27th February 2009. The management committee agreed that the main directions of this ECTN5 project should be concerned with the knowledge economy and widening of themes to include chemical engineering (we are in discussions with an Erasmus Mundus network in chemical engineering entitled CHEMEPASS) as well as interfaces with other disciplines (biology, materials, informatics, medicine, environment,…). Part of the application will also probably include the improvement of university teaching in chemistry and the development of open access learning systems, building on our past experience in these areas.

The next meeting of the ECTN Management Committee will take place in Thessaloniki, GR, on 7th February 2009.

All members are invited to contact Tony Smith if you have ideas for the ECTN5 project or items for discussion by the Management Committee.

Prof. Anthony Smith
Coordinator of ECTN
CPE Lyon, FR

Back to the NewsLetter