49 The Israel Chemist and Chemical Engineer Issue 9 · January 2023 · Tevet 5783 Report The 86th Annual Meeting of the Israel Chemical Society: September 12–13, 2022, David Intercontinental Hotel, Tel Aviv, Israel Ehud Keinan The Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel E-mail: keinan@technion.ac.il the absence of a foreign delegation. Over 600 participants enjoyed a diverse scientific program that included two plenary lectures. The 18 parallel sessions included 18 keynote lectures, 63 invited lectures, and 31 flash talks. The 240 posters were equally distributed between two poster sessions, and four were selected to receive the best poster prizes, announced at the closing ceremony. The ten sessions of the first day includedOrganic and Inorganic Chemistry (organized by Sergey Semenov of the Weizmann Institute), Chemical Biology and Biochemistry (organized by Muhammad Jbara of Tel Aviv University), Materials and Devices (organized by Adi Salomon of Bar-Ilan University, Spectroscopy (organized by Aharon Blank of the Technion), Chemical Education (organized by Sharona T. Levy of Haifa University), Organic and Inorganic Chemistry (organized by Graham de Ruiter of the Technion), Chemical Biology and Biochemistry (organized by Noam Adir of the Technion), Industrial and Analytical Chemistry (organized by Amir Mizrahi of the NRCN), Theoretical Chemistry (organized by Uri Peskin), and Energy (organized by Malachi Noked of Bar-Ilan University). The eight sessions of the second day included Organic Catalysis (organized by Mark Gandelman of the Technion), Polymer & Supramolecular Chemistry (organized by Gabriel Lemcoff of the Ben-Gurion University), Nanochemistry (organized by Lilac Amirav of the Technion), Agricultural and Food Chemistry (organized by Guy Mechrez of the Volcani Institute), Bioorganic Chemistry (organized by Amnon Bar-Shir of the Weizmann Institute), Polymer and Supramolecular Chemistry (organized by Michael Silverstein of the Technion), Electrochemistry (organized by David Eisenberg of the Technion), and Soft Matter and Biophysics (organized by Bat-El Pinchasik of Tel Aviv University. In addition to the scientific program, the ICS held its traditional General Assembly on the afternoon of the first day, Introduction The Annual Meeting of the Israel Chemical Society (ICS) has a long history since its establishment in 1933 and is a wellknown event in the scientific landscape of the State of Israel. These colorful gatherings of Israeli chemists usually occur in mid-February, which is the inter-semester break for all Israeli universities. Unfortunately, the Meeting of 2021 fell victim to the global Covid-19 pandemic, forcing a gap of 2.5 years between the 85th Meeting of February 2020 and the 86th Meeting in September 2022. Following ICS tradition, the chemistry departments of the six major research universities share responsibility for organizing these meetings in a six-year cycle in a constant order: the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Technion, Tel Aviv University, Bar-Ilan University, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and the Weizmann Institute of Science. Thus, looking back at the ICS history of the past two decades, the Technion has taken responsibility for organizing the 68th Meeting (2003), the 74th Meeting (2009), the 80th Meeting (2015), and the 86th Meeting (2022). Another unique tradition the ICS has followed for more than 25 years is hosting high-profile delegations of distinguished scient ists from top academic inst itut ions worldwide to deliver plenary and keynote lectures. This tradition has created outstanding opportunities for many Israeli scientists, particularly graduate students, to interact with world-renowned chemists, thus enhancing the prospects of networking and scientific collaboration. Unfortunately, the large delegation of 10 scientists and 20 graduate students from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Peking could not participate due to the “zero-Covid policy” of the Chinese authorities and restrictions on international travel. Nevertheless, it provided an opportunity for a happy gathering of many students and scientists from around Israel, after 2.5 years of restrictions on public meetings, even in
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