Our group of 11 NJC Board members and editors arrived in Hong Kong at the beginning of the week for the first of 3 stops on our 2012 China tour. About half of us are China “virgins” so we are quite excited and are looking forward to the week that awaits us.
University of Hong Kong Professor of Chemistry, Vivian Yam and her group were our hosts; they did such a great job, taking care of us and making sure we didn’t get lost in the 3D topology of the University!
The first symposium was a full program of 14 presentations by NJC board members/editors and Hong Kong chemists. Listening to these, I was struck by the connections between talks that, at first glance, had no relationship. Some of these were:
- ion channels (for biology and batteries by Dan Yang and Takashi Kato, respectively)
- use of porous materials (Len Barbour and JN Moorthy)
- the effects of aggregation (Kato again and Ben Zhong Tang)
- separating similar species (Michael Scott and Moorthy)
- fluorine containing systems (Odile Eisenstein and Peter Junk)
- transaminases (Helen Hailes and Ling Peng)
At the end of a long day, Niamh O’ Connor and Jamie Humphrey (of the RSC Publishing office in Cambridge) hosted the board members, editors and Vivian Yam for a lovely dinner. While sipping a velvety Australian Shiraz wine provided by Vivian, we tasted Shanghai-style delicacies, to give us a fore-taste of our upcoming stop.
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Left to right: Vivian Yam welcoming NJC members; Editor-in-chief Mir Wais Hosseini breaking the chicken; tea service. (Thanks to Debbie Crans for these photos.)
Thanks to Vivian and her team, all the participants, and the French Consulate of Hong Kong and Macau (who gave financial support) for making this event such a scientific success and a delight for all of us, who came such a long way!
Next stop: Shanghai!
