Welcome to our November newsletter bringing you news and updates from the home of structural science. This month we celebrate the CrystEngComm special issue highlighting the CSD 1 million, we have new upcoming virtual events on the calendar, latest blogs and much more.
The CCDC team
CrystEngComm celebrates the CSD 1 million
CrystEngComm is celebrating the CSD 1 million in a special issue 'The Cambridge Structural Database - A wealth of knowledge gained from a million structures', with 33 papers.
The RSC and the CCDC are now preparing a series of webinars with a selection of authors featured in the issue to takes us Behind the paper. More information about the webinars will be available soon, keep an eye on our website.
Save the date
Webinar: Advancing the case for collaboration, CCDC and PDB - 15th December
Join us for our webinar that welcomes two leaders in structural data: Dr Stephen K. Burley, Director of the RCSB PDB, and Dr Juergen Harter, CEO of the CCDC. During the webinar they will reflect on how biology and chemistry disciplines might collaborate and integrate for better research outcomes for all. Register here
Crystal Conversations - 3rd December
Jointly hosted by the BACG and CCDC, this month we welcome Joop ter Horst, University of Strathclyde and Dr Hamish Hei-Man Yeung, University of Birmingham. We also invite you to contribute your top tips to our community toolkit.
Congratulations to Dr Karen Robertson from Nottingham University for winning the CCDC Chemical Crystallography Prize for Younger Scientists 2020 (CCDC Prize). In this blog we highlight Karen's research and career Read more
Could the "Sunshine Vitamin" help in the fight against COVID-19?
Scientists have been looking for volunteers to take part in a new study to investigate the impacts of vitamin D on the immune system. The study aims to determine whether taking vitamin D can help to increase immunity against respiratory diseases, including COVID-19. Read more
Community Toolkit from Crystal Conversations
Hundreds of people have joined the CCDC and BACG at the Crystal Conversations virtual events this year - for tutorials, talks and tea breaks for solid form scientists of all disciplines. This month we built a community toolkit of resources that help you do great work. Read more
Research news
tmQM Dataset—Quantum Geometries and Properties of 86k Transition Metal Complexes
This month we highlight the latest paper from David Balcells and Bastian Bjerkem Skjelstad. The authors "report the transition metal quantum mechanics (tmQM) data set" which "comprises 86,665 mononuclear complexes extracted from the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD), including Werner, bioinorganic, and organometallic complexes based on a large variety of organic ligands and 30 transition metals". Read the full paper here
CSD Educators series
Professor Michael Zdilla from Temple University is our latest guest in the CSD Educators series. In his journey through crystallography teaching, Mike has created the Database for Educational Crystallographic Online Resources (DECOR), which we now host at the CCDC website. Read more about Michael's journey here
CCDC Virtual workshops: watch on demand
The CCDC Virtual Workshops series went live in November with three different sessions: Searching, Visualisation and Aromatics Analyser. We received great feedback from the attendees and we are planning to have more virtual workshops next year. The resources are now available for those that couldn't attend. Access the videos, exercise handout and slides here
If you'd like to contribute your stories or research to our monthly newsletter, please don't hesitate to get in touch at hello@ccdc.cam.ac.uk.
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