Kenting, Taiwan, October 14-19, 2007

Introduction

The 16th ISMAR conference was held in Kenting Howard Beach Resort, Taiwan on October 14-19, 2007. The conference was organized by Taiwan Magnetic Resonance Society, Academia Sinica, and National Science Council, Taiwan, The Republic of China.

There are a total 479 attendees from 28 different countries: Australia (13), Brazil (2), Canada (10), China (19), Czech Republics (2), Denmark (5), Finaland (4), France (11), Germany (29), Hong Kong (3), Hungary (1), India (7), Israel (4), Italy (3), Japan (47), Korea (41), The Netherlands (3), New Zealand (2), Poland (3), Russian (2), Singapore (6), Sweden (3), Switzerland (10), Taiwan (153), Turkey (1), Ukraine(1), UK(7), and USA (87).

The conference chair, Tai-huang Huang opened the conference in the evening of October 14. Andrew H.-J. Wang, the vice president of Academia Sinica, Sunney I. Chan, vice-honorary chair of the 16th ISMAR conference and Ad Bax, the president of ISMAR welcomed the delegates with short speeches. Kurt Wüthrich delivered the opening speech on “Current Trends of Solution NMR in Structural Biology and Structural Genomics”. It followed by ISMAR Prize presentation and speech by Seiji Ogawa (sponsored by Cambridge Isotope Laboratories).

Scientific Program

The Scientific Program composes of 11 plenary lectures, 75 invited lectures and 48 selected oral presentations. There were about 300 posters presented during the poster sessions. The topics included Solution NMR, Solid state NMR, MRI, Physics and Methods, and EPR. Following is a list of the plenary lectures:

• A Non-invasive Approach to Detect Cardiac Transplant Rejection by MRI (Chien Ho)
• Excited States and (NMR) Relaxation: Mapping Protein Energy Landscapes by Relaxation Dispersion (Peter E. Wright)
• High Frequency Dynamic Nuclear Polarization: Biradicals, Amyloid, Membrane Proteins and Liquids (Robert G. Griffin)
• The SAIL Method: A Way to Optimize Protein Samples for NMR Spectroscopy (Masatsune Kainosho)
• Specific and Non-specific Protein - DNA Interactions. The lac Repressor System. (Robert Kaptein)
• Manganese Cell Labeling and Tissue Delivery Using Manganese(III)-Transferrin (Christopher H. Sotak)
• Exploring New Spin Physics with Solution and Tissue Intermolecular Coherences (Warren S. Warren)
• Solid-state NMR for Small Molecule Crystallography ( Lyndon Emsley)
• Insight into Structure and Dynamics from Weak Alignment NMR (Ad Bax)
• The PMMO Story: A Saga with a Happy Ending in the Company of “Magnetic Resonance (Sunney I. Chan)

The Young Investigator Award, sponsored by Spectra Gases, is a new feature of the 16th ISMAR for recognizing the young talents under 41 years of age. Four from a total of thirty applicants were selected as the finalists for oral presentations to compete for the prize. Shang-te Danny Hsu and Ann Kwan co-shared the 2007 ISMAR Young Investigator Award and each received a US$300 monetary award. Susie Huang and Aldrik Velders are the other two finalists with each received the ISMAR Young Investigator Finalist Award.

The conference ended at noon on October 19, following the closing lecture by Sunney I. Chan.

Social events

The following four social programs were arranged.

• Welcome mixer on Sunday night, October 14: Pool side BBQ dinner with light Jazz band.
• Taiwan Culture Night on Tuesday, October 16: Special Taiwanese cuisines were provided. Culture performances included Synchronized Drum Drill, glove puppetry, Diabolo-Dance (Chinese yo-yo), and Taiwan aboriginal dance and songs performed by Tayal Culture Arts troupe.
• Excursion in the afternoon of Wednesday, October 17: Delegates can attend one of the two routes, hiking in the tropical Kenting National Park forest or sightseeing along the scenic southern Taiwan coast.
• Banquet on Thursday, October 18. Lion dance, performed by the Team-win Lion Dance troupe, welcomed the guests at the door of the banquet hall. Spectacular drum performance charged up the spirit of all delegates. While enjoying the delicious Chinese cuisine the delegates were also treated with various culture performances. These include the cheerful aboriginal dance, the soothing folk music performed with five classical Chinese instruments: ethu, yanggin, runa, liuqin and diza, the Taiwanese Opera and Magic Jack’s magic show and the traditional Chinese art “bianlian (changing face)”. All added up to a memorable evening

Acknowledgements

The organizers like to thank the ISMAR council for the opportunity for hosting our colleagues in the magnetic resonance community in the world in Taiwan. The continuous supports and numerous valuable advices from Ad Bax and Ted Becker are most appreciated. The strong financial supports of Academia Sinica (under the leadership of Yuan-Tseh Lee and Sunney I. Chan, the past President and vice-president of Academia Sinica, respectively), the National Science Council and the Ministry of Economics of ROC are keys to help bring this a successful and memorable conference. We also like to acknowledge all sponsors for their generosity and the International advisory boards and local committees for their contributions. Of course, the conference would not be possible without the participation of all speakers, session chairs, poster presenters and most importantly the participants. In closing, it is interesting to note that 300 of the delegates (60%) are from the Asian-Pacific region, attesting the vibrant research activity in magnetic resonance in this region.