Conference Announcement

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4 An Interesting Conference

We have received the following announcement of a Conference in 2 years time in Xiamen, China. The organiser Prof Tian is an old friend.

On behalf of the Committee of Light Scattering, Chinese Physical Society and the State Key Laboratory for Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, Xiamen University, Prof Tian is planning to organise an international symposium on ‘Progress in Surface Raman Spectroscopy: Theory, Technique and Application’ to be held in Xiamen on August 17-19th, 2000.

This symposium is organised as a satellite symposium for the 17th International Conference on Raman Spectroscopy (ICORS ‘2000’) to be held in Beijing in China, from August 20-25th, 2000.

The symposium is devised to survey the latest developments in surface Raman Spectroscopy and will last for three days, including a half-day excursion. It will consist of invited lectures, oral and poster contributions and a round table discussion. As you know, the ICORS is a large International Conference having more than 20 sections and normally arranges 3-5 speakers for each section. It is hoped that our symposium will bring together both experimentalists and theoreticians to present concepts, methods and discussion on common problems whose understanding can benefit from complementary approaches from only apparently different starting points, and outline future coordinated directions of research capable of bringing new insight into the general field of surface, material and life sciences.

Xiamen (also known as Amoy) is a well-known historic seaport city located on the southeast coast of China. As one of the four Special Economic Zones in China, Xiamen has developed as a modern city. It is also one of the top ten tourist cities in China, that boasts a beautiful landscape and the so called Garden Island. Xiamen can be reached easily from Hong Kong (3 one-hour flights a day). Participants can also take flights to Xiamen via Beijing (3 two and a half hour flights a day), Shanghai (5-7 one and a half hour flights a day) and Guangzhou (4 one hour flights a day), which are connected with about 40 major cities in the World by direct flights. Direct international flights from Singapore, Manila, Jakarta and Penang to Xiamen are also available. The temperature in August will be between 21-33°C and all the hotel and meeting rooms are air-conditioned.

The symposium will take place at Xiamen University, one of the Key Universities in China and having newly built facilities with numerous modern lecture theatres on a very attractive campus. The Committee has experience of organising many international conferences and symposia. For example, the 46th Annual Meeting of the International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE46) was successfully organised between August 27th and September 1st, 1995, when the Committee hosted 812 participants including 508 foreign participants from 46 countries. The Committee is sure that a visit to Xiamen will be a very pleasant and memorable one.

The main research field of the State Key Laboratory for Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces at Xiamen University includes electrochemistry, catalysis, structural chemistry and cluster science. The Laboratory is a State Key Laboratory. Our Raman Laboratory is the largest in China with four Raman spectrometers including a Ramalog 6 (Spex), U1000 and S3000 (J-Y), LabRam I (Dilor) and three lasers from Coherent and SP. Much attention is paid to the development of new techniques including surface Raman spectroscopy. A technical tour of the State Key Laboratory can be arranged one evening during the symposium.

Prof. Tian is an old Southamptonian, as is his lady wife Dr. Bing Wei Mao. I have had the pleasure of visiting Xiamen – fantastic – a lovely region with many sites well worthy of a visit. The science – superb! Z.Q. Tian has contributed papers to IJVS. See Volume 1 Edition 2.

Editor