The Annual International Meetings of the ESR Spectroscopy Group of the Royal Society of Chemistry
With over 50 successful past conferences to its credit, the ESR Spectroscopy Group of the RSC has firmly established a prestigious Annual International Meeting which is generally held in the spring of each year at a university within the UK. The ESR Group is also one of the oldest special interest groups within the Royal Society of Chemistry, having been a member group of the RSC ever since it was created in 1968.
The Meetings cover applications and theory of ESR spectroscopy in a wide range of scientific disciplines, from physics, chemistry and biochemistry to biology and the earth and medical sciences. Our meetings enable scientists with very different interests, held together by their common passion for the application of ESR spectroscopy, to meet, talk, and to exchange views and ideas. This is a major strength for the conference in a world where science disciplines have become more and more specialized.
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The Meeting usually runs from a Sunday until the following Thursday, either just before or just after the Easter Holiday. Delegates arrive on the Sunday afternoon for registration, sometimes a lecture, and an evening reception. They leave after lunch on the following Thursday. The general format of the Meeting consists of a series of plenary lectures of 50 minutes and 25-minute invited lectures, followed by 20-minute lectures that are selected from the submitted abstracts. Plenary lecturers are carefully chosen by the Committee who invite established and renowned scientists to describe and discuss their work, putting into perspective the important recent developments in their fields of interest. Posters displaying delegates’ current research work are welcomed and are displayed throughout the week.
In addition to the plenary lectures and talks, the Conference is also the occasion for the annual Bruker Prize and Lecture, sponsored by Bruker Biospin. We actively encourage postgraduate and postdoctoral students, sometimes by providing bursaries, and always by giving registration discounts, to present their own work during the Meeting. To this end JEOL UK are generously sponsoring JEOL Student Lectures: a prize is awarded for the best presentation by a young scientist at the conference. The competition is open to PhD students and postdoctoral fellows in their first year of research. We also run on behalf of Bruker an annual student thesis prize: this prize is awarded to recognise outstanding work by a PhD student in the field of ESR Spectroscopy, with entrants submitting their thesis for shortlisting by the RSC ESR Group Committee and the winner delivering a special lecture at the conference.
The conference has a lively Social Program with several receptions, usually an afternoon excursion on Tuesday, and a Conference Banquet on Wednesday. Photo archives of some of the past conferences may be found here. If you appear in any of these photographs and wish them to be removed please email the webmaster with details of the relevant photograph(s).