Boron Chemistry (IMEBORON XVI)

Michael A. Beckett

doi:10.1515/ci-2017-0422

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Boron Chemistry (IMEBORON XVI)

Michael A. Beckett

Published/Copyright: November 7, 2017

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From the journal Chemistry International Volume 39 Issue 4

The 16th International meeting on Boron chemistry (IMEBORON XVI), was held over the period 9-13 July 2017 on the beautiful campus of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Sha Tin, Hong Kong. This is close to the vibrant and cosmopolitan waterfront area and Hong Kong island. Previous meetings of this triennial conference have been held in various countries around the world, but this is the first time it has visited China. Topics addressed at IMEBORON XVI included organic and bioorganic boron chemistry, inorganic and cluster boron chemistry, boron in medicine, and materials. There were 222 registered participants who came from 19 different countries; the continents of Europe, North America, Asia and Australia were represented. The programme included 5 plenary lectures, 22 keynote lectures, 39 invited lectures, 51 contributed lectures and 61 poster presentations.

The conference started with a warm welcoming reception Sunday evening. The well-attended opening ceremony on Monday morning contained short presentations by the Dean of Science (Prof. H. N.-C. Wong, CUHK), the IUPAC Representative (Prof. M.A. Beckett) and the Conference Chair (Prof. Z. Xie). This was followed by the first plenary lecture by Prof J. Michl who spoke on “Highly halogenated icosahedral CB11 carborane anions and radicals.” Keynote, invited and contributed lectures were then run in parallel sessions, and a special parallel BNCT session on the Monday afternoon was dedicated to the memory of Dr Y. Mishima. There was plenty of time allocated in the program for poster viewing and discussions on Monday evening. Further plenary lectures were delivered on the Tuesday morning (Prof. H. Braunschweig—Turning boron chemistry on its head: the unusual coordination chemistry of boron in low oxidation states, and Prof I. Manners—Catalytic, metal-mediated, and metal free routes to molecules and materials based on boron and other p-block elements) and Wednesday morning (Prof F. Teixidor—Boron clusters, not just one chemistry but also one opportunity) and the scientific part of the conference was concluded on Thursday lunchtime with the final plenary lecture by Prof. S. Wang who delivered a lecture on “Controlling molecular transformations of organoboron compounds.” The plenary, keynote and invited lectures will be published in a special volume of Pure and Applied Chemistry in due course.

The social programme included the conference dinner which was an excellent Banquet held at ClubOne in Science Park on Wednesday evening and concluded after the final closing remarks. Guests were offered the options of a “City tour” or a “Culture and Heritage Tour” of Hong Kong island on the Thursday afternoon.

The conference concluded by closing remarks from the Conference Chair Prof Z. Xie and poster prize presentations. The poster prizes sponsored by Dalton Transactions and Organometallics, were presented to the six winners: Ruofei Cheng (Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry), Anangsha De (Indian Institute of Technology, Madras), Delong Han (University of Rostock), Hsiu-Chen Tsai (National Taiwan University), Florian Rauch (Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg), and Junwei Wang (Beijing Institute of Technology) by Associate Editor of Dalton Transactions Prof. G.-X. Jin and Associate Editor of Organometallics Prof. F. Gabbai.

The Local Organizing Committee, chaired by Prof. Z. Xie, was thanked and congratulated at the end of the conference on the wonderful job of producing a varied programme, comprising all aspects of boron chemistry and for a thoughtful social programme.

The next conference in this series will be held in Rennes, France, in early July 2020 with Prof. J.F. Halet and Prof G. Alcaraz (Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Rennes, Université de Rennes) as Honorary Co-Chairs.

Published Online: 2017-11-7

Published in Print: 2017-10-1

Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/ci-2017-0422