The International Summer School “Crystallography Beyond Diffraction”

The International Summer School “Crystallography Beyond Diffraction: The role of spectroscopies and theoretical calculations in revealing structural information” was organized by the Commission on Teaching of the Italian Crystallographic Association (AIC). The school took place at University of Camerino (Italy) from July 4 to 8, 2011. Fifty-nine students with backgrounds in chemistry, mineralogy, materials science, biology, and physics from Italy (44), France (3), Germany (4), Iran (2), Latvia (1), New Zealand (1), Norway (1), Turkey (1), UK (1), USA (1), plus 10 undergraduate and Ph.D. students from Camerino, six delegates of sponsoring companies, and fifteen lecturers (from Italy, France, Germany, and Spain) attended the school. Because of the generous contributions of sponsors (Bruker AXS, Assing-Rigaku, PANalytical, Agilent, Crystal Impact) many full or partial scholarships were awarded. The Summer School was opened by M. Zema, M. Milanesio, and E. Paris, chairs of the Scientific and Organizing Committees, who introduced the welcome speeches of C. Mealli, President of the AIC, I. Antonini, pro-chancellor of University of Camerino, and R. Ballini, head of the Faculty of Science at University of Camerino. The opening ceremony was followed by a plenary lecture by D. Viterbo titled “Love diffraction, but do not leave it alone!”. D. Viterbo emphasized the increasing need of combining different techniques in order to have a complete view of the structure of solids taking a journey into his personal crystallographic experience. The program of the school started from the basics of matter-radiation interaction (P. Fornasini) and diffraction (single-crystal: D. Viterbo, powder: A. Gualtieri) and moved towards advanced diffraction methods, such as the total scattering technique (M. Dapiaggi) and the Automated Diffraction Tomography for structure solution from electron crystallography (A. Stewart). The following two days were dedicated to computational methods, with particular regard to molecular simulation of condensed phases (A. Gavezzotti), quantum-mechanical methods for modelling periodic systems (B. Civalleri) and calculation of lattice energies and forces (A. Gavezzotti), and to spectroscopic techniques, from vibrational (S. Tarantino) to X-ray absorption (P. Fornasini) and emission (P. Glatzel) spectroscopies, from Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering (P. Glatzel) to solid state NMR (R. Gobetto). Finally, several examples of applications of all these techniques in combination, with the aim of revealing the multiple aspects of structural information at different length scales, have been described: XRD combined with vibrational spectroscopies and correlation analysis (A. Urakawa), IR spectroscopy combined with XRD in crystalchemical studies (G. Della Ventura), XRD combined with XAS (G. Giuli), Rietveld refinement combined with spectroscopic methods (A. Gualtieri), simultaneous Raman= XRD combined with theoretical calculations and solid state NMR (M. Milanesio and G. Croce). The program of the School was completed by tutorials and practical sessions on topics including Rietveld and PDF