Welcome to our September newsletter bringing you news and updates from the home of structural science. This month we invite you to join us for our Global UGM and Science Day virtual meetings, take part in the Community Survey 2020, and watch our latest tutorial videos on our YouTube channel. We all love science in 3D - why not take up the challenge and get involved in our 3D print contest? Read on for news on these and much more.
The CCDC team
Events to attend
Global UGM virtual meeting - 14th October
You are invited to our global user group meeting on "The Future of in silico Science" on Wednesday 14th October. Throughout the day we will have insight talks from academics and industrial scientists, discussions about the applications of the CCDC software, and networking opportunities. We hope to catch up there!
A virtual meeting hosted by CCDC and BACG that aims to help the solid form chemistry community learn and grow together in the absence of traditional conferences. In October's meeting we will have several lightning talks (1 slide / 3 minutes) from students and early career scientists presenting their work.
FIZ Karlsruhe and CCDC joint service - 7th October
This is a joint and interactive session to reflect and discuss our users requirements and priorities for the development of more advanced searches and services across the CSD and the ICSD. The interactive event in October will be an open and guided discussion.
The CSP Blind Test brings together scientists from industry and academia to test their leading methods against a real example in a controlled environment in order to push forward the science of Crystal Structure Prediction - CSP.
The 7th CSP Blind Test is starting soon - for more information and updates click here.
CCDC Community survey 2020
We value our community and your opinion about the way we work is very important to us. Take this 10 minute survey and let us know what you like and what we should improve. Take the survey here
Latest blogs
August 2020.2 CSD data update
The August 2020 data update of the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) brought 12,269 new structures (12,694 new database entries) and increases the total size of the CSD to over 1,060,000 structures (1,080,000 entries), with 27,298 entries from journal articles published in 2020. Read Seth's blog to find out more about what is included with the 2020.2 CSD Release. Read more
A summer of data sharing
The data we receive at the CCDC comes in many shapes and forms - you might find it surprising but some of the deposits we get still occasionally come via post rather than via our online deposition process or email. Every year during the summer months we have a student working with us to preserve unknown datasets. Read the blog to find out more about this annual initiative. Read more
The impact of COVID-19 on the CSD
Since a pandemic was declared 6 months ago we have been closely monitoring what impact this has had for our users, depositors and the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD). We thought it was about time we shared some of our observations and hopefully give you some positive news for a change. Read more
Paper Spotlight: Structural Rugosity in Crystallisation
The field of Crystal Structure Prediction (CSP) has grown dramatically over the last few decades. A recent publication from Montis et al makes use of new informatics tools to assess surface roughness (rugosity) and proposes a relationship between this and ease of crystallisation. Read more
CCDC 3D Print contest is open
We want the whole community to know how easy and fun it is to create an experimentally accurate 3D print of any part of a crystal structure using our visualisation and analysis tool Mercury.
Get involved in our annual 3D Print Contest to spread the word! The contest runs annually throughout summer, with the winner announced in the autumn, receiving a $50 gift card from Shapeways.
It's easy to take part…
Create a 3D printed model using Mercury and your 3D printer of choice.
Snap a photo of the model.
Share it on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #CSD3DPrint, and don’t forget to tag us (@ccdc_cambridge)!
The model must be yours, designed using Mercury, and can’t be resubmitted from prior years. Read the full rules and terms and conditions here
What's Up Webinar September - Watch on demand!
In the September What's Up webinar we covered the CSD KNIME Component Collection and the CSD subsets. If you missed it, watch on demand here.
We recently published two new tutorial videos to help you with our software and tools. Subscribe to our YouTube channel today and get a notification every time a new video is published.
How to use CSD Subsets in ConQuest
Watching this video will help you find specific entries in the CSD such as drugs, pesticides, MOFs or best representative structures by showing you how to use subsets in ConQuest.