2021 CECAM - organisation page

• Organisers: Benoît Braïda, Etienne Derat, Sason S. Shaik, Mathias Bickelhaupt

Constitution of the advisory scientific board

People to invite

• Experimentalists:

1. Peter Chen (peter.chen .at. org.chem.ethz.ch) --> ±Confirmed
2. Michelle Coote (michelle.coote .at. anu.edu.au) --> Confirmed
3. Rainer Herges (rherges [at] oc.uni-kiel.de ) --> Confirmed
4. Johannes Klein (jemn.klein .at. gmail.com) --> Confirmed
5. Clark Landis (clarklandis .at. me.com ; landis .at. chem.wisc.edu) --> Waiting
6. Melanie Sanford (mssanfor .at. umich.edu)--> Declined
7. Backup: Mårten Ahlquist, Helmut Schwarz, Peter. R. Schreiner

• Theoreticians:

1. Celia Fonseca-Guerra (c.fonsecaguerra .at. vu.nl) --> Confirmed
2. Martin Head-Gordon (mhg .at. bastille.cchem.berkeley.edu) --> Confirmed
3. Roald Hoffmann (rh34 .at. cornell.edu) --> Declined
4. Erin Johnson (erin.johnson .at. dal.ca) --> Declined
5. Silvia Osuna (silvia.osuna .at. udg.edu) --> Confirmed
6. Wei Wu (weiwu .at. xmu.edu.cn) --> Confirmed
7. Odile Eisenstein --> Confirmed
8. Backup: Philippe C. Hiberty

Plannification

• Short term

  - Validation of various boards (four of us)
  - Sending a message to local node CECAM director to ask him if he is willing to support it (Etienne)
  - Budget needed, estimation from foreseen names (Benoît)

• Mid-term

 - Validation of the main topics
 - Validation of the main speakers
 - Writing two pages summarising goals and topics
 - Creating a nice A4 flyer for advertising the workshop
 - Managing money (coffee/restaurant/accommodation)

• Long term

 - Accommodation (critical in Paris!!!!)
 - booking a place (campus Jussieu or elsewhere?)

Invitation mail

Dear Pr. xxx,

We are currently planning to organise a CECAM workshop in Paris during Spring 2021.

As you probably know, the main goal of CECAM is to provide space and time for researchers to discuss and exchange ideas with colleagues.

Therefore, our main idea is to create a forum between experimentalists and theoreticians, during 3-4 days, in Paris.

This would take the shape of a meeting with a selected audience: ~30 people overall aiming at parity between expremimentalists and theoreticians.

We plan to focus on 3 selected topics where the dialogue should be productive.

For each topic, 1 experimentalist and 1 theoreticians would be given a plenary talk with for mission to open questions, propose new directions, and lead the discussion on their topic.

A few short talks will also be allowed, but ample space should be left for discussion.

A tentative title for this CECAM meeting might be, for instance:

“New views in bonding and reactivity in (bio)chemistry: a dialogue between theoreticians and experimentalists“

Some possible examples of topics:

- Reactivities under Oriented Electric Field ;

- Unusual Structures and Bondings (that could include charge-shift bonds, inverted bonds, and/or bonding in excited states) ;

- Enzymatic and Biomimetic Investigations

-...

We would really be happy and honoured if you accepted to join our little team by becoming a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee.

Your role would be:

i) to propose and then select collectively the 3 topics of interest ;

ii) to propose and then vote for the names of the 6 plenary speakers / discussion leaders ;

iii) to select the oral presentations among the submitted abstracts for the short talks.

Of course, as we aim to make this event an official CECAM workshop, it'll take place eventually only if we get granted by CECAM. However, we have to set up things (precise project and schedule, 3 topics and 6 main speakers/animators) in advance.

With our best regards,

Sason Shaik, Etienne Derat and Benoît Braïda