European Single-Crystal Users Meeting

Mathias Meyer is currently Software Manager, R&D, for Rigaku Oxford Diffraction. Mathias received his DM in mineralogy from the Technical University of Berlin and his Ph. D. in 1997 from the Institut de Cristallographie of the Université de Lausanne under the supervision of Chapuis Gervais. From 1997 to 2000 Dr. Meyer continued teaching at the Université de Lausanne and began developing software for Kuma Diffraction Instruments Sàrl. In 2000, Kuma was merged into Oxford and Dr. Meyer has developing and managing the development of CryAlisPro since.

Dr. Ferrara has spent the last 30 years developing hardware and software tools for X-ray crystallography and X-ray imaging for the research community. He is currently Chief Science Officer, Rigaku Americas Corp and Vice President, X-ray Research Laboratory, Rigaku Corporation. Dr. Ferrara is a member and past chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for the BioTech Institute of the Lone Star Community College System. Dr. Ferrara is the President of the America Crystallographic Association and the Books Editor for ACA RefleXions. Dr. Ferrara is also a Texas State Firefighters' and Fire Marshals' Association certified firefighter and National Registry Emergency Medical Responder. He has been a member of Timber Lakes Volunteer Fire Department for over 25 years and Treasurer for 15 years. Dr. Ferrara received both his Bachelor of Science and Doctorate degrees from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He conducted undergraduate research in ion cyclotron resonance under Prof. R. C. Dunbar while his graduate research focused on physical organometallic chemistry under Prof. Wiley C. Youngs. Upon completing his doctorate in 1988, he joined Molecular Structure Corporation, which became a subsidiary of Rigaku Corporation in 1996.

Dr. Jakub Wojciechowski is an application scientist working in the Rigaku Europe SE office based in Germany. Before Jakub joined Rigaku, he spent seven years as a crystallographer, research scientist and lecturer at the Łódź University of Technology in, Łódź, Poland. During this period, Jakub regularly collaborated with synthetic chemists, very often providing crucial information for publications, which is absolute structure results. Jakub is now responsible for supporting Rigaku’s clients in the Europe/Middle East/Africa region, helping them with data collection and processing, and also crystal structure publication.

Dr. Christian Schürmann studied Chemistry at the Georg-August-University in Göttingen (Germany), where he also graduated as PhD in the fields of chemical crystallography and experimental charge-density. As for experimental charge density, data quality is highly important and each step of data processing can contribute to – or compromise – data quality, an in-depth knowledge of the data processing steps, i.e. data integration, are part of his expertise. He joined Rigaku in 2019 and is now supporting Rigaku’s clients all over the Europe/Middle East/Africa region.

Earlier in his career, Horst Puschmann was a synthetic inorganic chemist who relied heavily on X-Ray diffraction as an analytical technique. He found some of the crystallographic tools that were available at the time a little trying and moved gradually from complaining about this into actually trying to improve crystallographic software so that it can be used by any everyday chemist. Working in Prof. Judith Howards lab in Durham, Horst met Oleg Dolomanov in around 2004 and Olex2 was born. Oleg and Horst have been developing Olex2 ever since.

After undergraduate studies at the University of Heidelberg, Dr. Robert Bücker obtained a PhD degree in experimental quantum physics from the Vienna University of Technology. In 2013, he joined the department of Prof. Dwayne Miller at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg and the University of Toronto, where he worked on developing novel techniques to visualize the atomic structure and dynamics of beam-sensitive biological specimens using electron diffraction and microscopy. In 2020, he continued this line of research as a postdoc within a shared project between the Technion Israel Institute of Technology (Group of Prof. Meytal Landau) and the Leibniz Institute of Virology (Group of Prof. Kay Grünewald), studying aggregation dynamics and polymorphism of functional amyloid fibrils using cryo-electron microscopy. Returning to diffractive methods, in 2022 he joined Rigaku as product manager for electron diffraction, steering the development of the XtaLAB Synergy-ED, Rigaku’s fully integrated solution for three-dimensional microcrystal electron diffraction (3D ED/MicroED).

Dr. Christian Göb is working as an application scientist for Rigaku Europe SE. He obtained his doctorate in supramolecular chemistry from the RWTH Aachen University (Germany) and worked as a visiting scientist at the Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University (Japan). His expertise lies in application and characterization of large assemblies like molecular cages, their inclusion compounds and polymers (two-dimensional networks, metal and covalent organic frameworks). His main responsibilities include demonstrations and trainings for users of single crystal diffraction instruments, assistance in crystallographic questions, preparation of publication material and application of the crystalline sponge method in the EMEA region.

Dr. Khai-Nghi Truong obtained his PhD in inorganic chemistry and small molecule crystallography at RWTH Aachen University (Germany) in late 2018, working under Prof. Ulli Englert on the synthesis and characterization of metal-organic frameworks. From 2019 to 2022, Khai worked as a postdoctoral research fellow with the renowned Prof. Kari Rissanen at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland). He was part of the EU funded Horizon2020 FET Open research and innovation programme INITIO working as an expert in solid-state. His areas of expertise are inorganic and organic small molecule crystallography, supramolecular chemistry as well as materials science. As service crystallographer, chair of the Young Crystallographers of the German Society of Crystallographic (DGK-YC) and German representative of the Young Crystallographers’ European Crystallographic Association (YC-ECA) for several years, Khai has build-up a strong network of collaborators all around the world. He has contributed to more than 60 publications using different diffraction methods, viz. X-ray powder diffraction, single crystal X-ray and neutron diffraction. Khai joined Rigaku Europe SE in mid 2022, working as Application Scientist for both single crystal X-ray and electron diffraction supporting Rigaku’s clients in the EMEA region.

Dr. Matic Lozinšekis a Marie Curie Fellow (IOF) and earned his PhD in Inorganic Chemistry from the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he also received his Diploma in Chemistry. As the founder of the Extreme Conditions Chemistry Lab, Matic focuses on the synthetic and structural studies of novel compounds under extreme pressure and temperature conditions.

Jessica obtained her Ph.D. from UCLA, where she specialized in organic synthesis and the use of electron diffraction to determine the structures of small molecules. Prior to joining Rigaku, she was a staff scientist at Caltech, focusing on high throughput analysis of natural products and pharmaceuticals using electron diffraction.