Last week, some of the world’s leading and emerging scientists in the field of chemical biology gathered in Manchester, UK, for ISACS5: Challenges in Chemical Biology. The conference had a lot to live up to after the success of previous ISACS meetings and it certainly did not disappoint.
RSC President David Phillips opened the conference by awarding RSC Honorary Fellowships to Professors Thomas Steitz (Yale University, USA) and Venki Ramakrishnan (MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, UK). The two Honorary Fellows then kicked off the conference proper with the first two plenary lectures, both related to their studies of the structure and function of the ribosome, for which they won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2009. Movies with music were a prominent and enjoyable feature of both talks and were much discussed at the following welcome reception.
- From left to right: Venki Ramakrishnan, David Phillips, Thomas Steitz
- Hagan Bayley (right) awards Ben Davis the Norman Heatley award medal
Of course, in between these awards there were 26 more great talks, two poster sessions and lots of networking. My colleague Phillip Broadwith (acting Features Editor, Chemistry World) has written an interesting roundup of some of his highlights of the conference, available on the Chemistry World Blog.
My ISACS journey has ended for this year but Robert Eagling, Managing Editor of Chemical Science, will be in Beijing next month for ISACS6: Challenges in Organic Materials & Supramolecular Chemistry. The registration deadline for ISACS6 is today so you’ll have to be quick if you’d like to attend.
I’d like to thank the conference committee, all the speakers, poster presenters and delegates for making ISACS5 a highly interactive, high quality and enjoyable meeting.
