52 The Israel Chemist and Chemical Engineer Issue 9 · January 2023 · Tevet 5783 Report The “Good Carbon” Symposium wi l l focus on using compounds of a single carbon atom, such as natural gas and carbon dioxide emissions, as feedstock for the chemical industry. The symposium will highlight the methanol-based economy, methanol-to-olefins (MTO) processes, synthetic fuels, novel fuel cells, and clean energy. These topics will create high interest for businesspeople, venture capitalists, government ministries, startup entrepreneurs, chemical industry leaders, and the public. The ChemCon Exhibition will provide direct access to global chemical research, development, and manufacturing. Al l aspects of chemistry, including research tools and infrastructure, analytical methods and instrumentation, energy, synthetic fuels, environmental sciences, green energy, nanotechnology, materials science, food science, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, bio-analytics, quantitative measurement of biological molecules, industry and manufacturing, process control, quality assurance and quality control of manufactured products, industrial processes, intellectual property, venture capital companies, and more. The ChemCon2023 wi l l create synergism between the academic, business, and government communit ies, generating high interest among chemists, chemical engineers, businesspeople, government agencies, and the public in chemistry opportunities. Take advantage of the opportunity to attend the event. Thanks again for participating in the 86th ICS Meeting; I wish you an enjoyable, highly fruitful experience!” Plenary lectures Leeor Kronik of the Weizmann Institute of Science, the ICS Prize of Excellence winner, lectured on “Predicting materials properties from first principles: A density functional theory journey.” He provided some perspectives from his journeys in predicting materials properties from first principles, based on density functional theory. On the one hand, he emphasized the ongoing dialogue between theory and a diverse set of experiments, covering the range of chemical, mechanical, electrical, optical, magnetic, and more. On the other hand, he surveyed highlights from work on developments within density functional theory, especially on orbital-dependent functionals, which have been indispensable to gaining true predictive power. Stephen Weiner and Lia Addadi of the Weizmann Institute of Science, winners of the ICS Gold Medal, lectured jointly on “Biomineralization is chemistry and biology with a history.” It’s a pleasure to open this Meeting after a gap of two and a half years. We postponed this Meeting more than once and even considered waiting for another year until February 2023. It is typical for the Israeli community that no matter what the circumstances are, we keep going and continue our annual meetings as usual. As we all know, nothing is standard in Israel, but the past two years have been very unusual in Israel and worldwide. The ICS was established in 1933, and we’ ll celebrate our 90th anniversary next year. Holding now the 86th Meeting means that the Israeli community of chemists met uninterrupted almost every year over the past nine decades. And we had many reasons to postpone these meetings, including World War II, Israel ’s War of Independence, and many other upheavals. Thus, skipping the 2021 meeting due to Covid-19 was a rare historical event. We were fortunate to hold the 85th ICS meeting in mid-February 2020 with the Yale delegation, just two weeks before hell broke loose and Covid-19 changed all human activities worldwide. Although we lost the opportunity to host the Chinese delegation of 30 scientists from China, I’m happy to see the many enthusiastic young people eager to resume the Annual Meeting and meet friends and colleagues from around the country. I take this opportunity to announce the general plans for the 87th Meeting. The ICS managing Board has decided to hold it on the first week of July, immediately after the end of the academic year, to maximize the number of participants. W will host a large delegation from Denmark, including 10 professors and 20 graduate students from the University of Copenhagen, the Technical University of Denmark, and Aarhus University. The Meeting will be part of a more significant event named Chemistry Congress, ChemCon 2023, planned for July 3–5, 2023, at the International Convention Center, Jerusalem. We join forces with the Haaretz/TheMarker Group to organize these events because the two organizations share complementary expertise and experience. The Haaretz Group, which is 103 years old, and a bit older than the ICS, will allocate its international content marketing tools to maximize the ChemCon2023 exposure. In contrast, the ICS will ensure a relevant, packed, and well-diversified scientific program. The ChemCon2023 will include three major components to create synergism and generate high interest among chemists, chemical engineers, businesspeople, government agencies, and the public: A one-day symposium on “The Good Carbon” opportunities, the two-day ICS 87th Annual Meeting, and an unprecedentedly large, three-day international chemistry exhibition.
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