Back in 2020, the world changed. At the start of the year, most of us had heard about COVID-19 but had little sense of what it would mean for daily life. China had just begun implementing lockdowns and, although the rest of the world did not yet realise it, similar restrictions would soon spread globally. Near the end of February, I attended a conference in Wrocław, Poland—the first joint Polish and German crystallography meeting—where the topic came up frequently in conversations with colleagues and customers. It would be the last conference I attended in person for more than two years.
As lockdowns spread from China to Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic, France, the UK, India, and beyond, it became clear that many long-standing fixtures of the academic calendar would be postponed at best and cancelled at worst.
Although many organisations around the world offered crystallographic training courses that were threatened by COVID-19, the cancellation of the ACA summer school in particular became the catalyst for what would later become the Rigaku School for Practical Crystallography.
At the same time, several Rigaku scientists suddenly found their day-to-day workload significantly reduced. Application scientists who would normally host instrument demonstrations, travel for on-site training, or attend conferences could no longer do any of those things.
Our Head of Marketing at the time, Paul Swepston, recognised that these two challenges could be addressed with one elegant solution. He proposed that we create an online school of our own—one that would help fill the educational gap created by the pandemic while also giving our scientists a meaningful way to contribute during lockdown.
Once the decision had been made to hold the school, the next step was to build a curriculum. Our staff were—and still are—experts at explaining how to use diffractometers and how to achieve the best possible results, so Joe Ferrara, our CSO, decided to focus the programme on practical crystallography. The name followed naturally.
Then came the meetings—many meetings. Together, we defined the structure of the lecture programme, starting with an introduction to the school and moving through each stage of the crystallographic experiment: data collection, data reduction, corrections (or, as we call it, data finalisation), structure solution, refinement, and publication checks. We also added several advanced topics that many crystallographers encounter during their careers, including twinning and absolute structure determination. Once the topics were assigned across the team, we began preparing the lectures.
After the lectures were drafted, we held still more meetings to review, refine, and tune them. We already had a Zoom licence from previous webinars, so the delivery mechanism was in place. To recreate some of the interaction that students and lecturers would normally have in person, we decided to make use of our established online forum.
Finally, we learned that some institutes were planning to offer course credit to their students for attending the school. If we had not been treating it seriously before, we certainly were now. That meant we needed an exam, which in turn meant writing questions, creating a way to administer the test, and producing certificates. Each of us contributed questions based on our lectures, and together we built a large question pool. Our marketing team designed the certificates, while software was developed to run the exam online.
After several months of intense preparation, everything was in place. We were ready.
We began promoting the school shortly after settling on the format and dates, and the response took us by surprise. Our original Zoom licence allowed for up to 300 attendees, but within days it became clear that we had seriously underestimated demand and would need to expand it. Students registered from all over the world, and by the end we had around 1,200 registrations from more than 80 countries.
Faced with a student-to-lecturer ratio of roughly 100 to 1, we decided that every lecturer should attend every session during the first school. In addition to the presenter and host, we assigned one person to triage and distribute questions, another to handle technical support in the chat, another to monitor the school email, and another to manage forum requests and the test while also helping to answer questions. At the end of each day, we held a debrief to discuss what had gone well and what needed to be improved.
During the lectures, questions came in thick and fast. Multiple application scientists worked simultaneously to answer them; some were addressed live, while many others had to be handled afterwards. Despite frequently overrunning our planned timeslots, we rarely managed to get through every question.
Demand remained high, so we decided to launch another edition aimed at different time zones. With a little more work, we introduced the second Rigaku School for Practical Crystallography in July, just one month later. We expected participation to be only a fraction of the first school’s level, but registrations ended up being similarly strong. Later that year, we followed up with the Advanced School for Practical Crystallography, covering more specialised topics such as high-pressure crystallography and PDF. Continued interest led to further editions and, at the time of writing in 2026, we have now run the Rigaku School for Practical Crystallography five times, in addition to holding the Advanced School twice. With 7 schools completed and a changing lineup, we have also had many contributors. There are too many to list for which I apologise, but you all know who you are and your time and effort are greatly appreciated.
So how did it all go, and how far did we reach? Across all editions of the school, we have had more than 5,000 registered students and welcomed back many repeat participants.
Even so, over the whole series we reached students in 97 countries, including places where there is little or no opportunity to access this kind of local tuition.
The original vision came from Paul and Joe, whose leadership gave the rest of us something clear and worthwhile to build towards. But the school’s success has also depended on the time, expertise, and generosity of many colleagues across Rigaku who helped turn that vision into a reality. For my part, the Rigaku School for Practical Crystallography remains one of the projects I am most proud to have been involved in. What began as a response to an extraordinary moment grew into something far more lasting: A resource that has helped thousands of students strengthen their understanding of crystallography. If the school has made the subject more accessible, more practical, or simply less intimidating for the people who joined us, then all the effort was worth it.