Blog September 2020

The September Crystal Conversations meeting included a Careers Clinic session. Attendees asked our panel of 6 professionals questions about career options, progression and advice for the future of jobs in STEM.

Data comes to us in many shapes and forms (or formats) and you might find it surprising but some of the deposits we get still occasionally come via post rather than via our online deposition process or email. But what good comes from the paper copies for the users of our electronic database?

The field of Crystal Structure Prediction (CSP) has grown dramatically over the last few decades, but today I want to highlight a recent paper which takes a new approach. The recent publication from Montis et al makes use of new informatics tools to assess surface roughness (rugosity) and proposes a relationship between this and ease of crystallisation. 

With every challenge, there is opportunity. Looking into the vast challenge that is COVID-19 it can be difficult to see this, but the pandemic has forced us to contemplate new possibilities in all areas of life, including scientific research.

The world turned to the pharmaceutical industry for help, and the variety of responses makes us question; how did some get ahead while others struggled?

Since a pandemic was declared nearly 6 months ago we have been closely monitoring what impact this has had for our users, depositors and the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD). We thought it was about time we shared some of our observations and hopefully give you some positive news for a change.

Highlights and insights about our home-friendly activities for kids, towards the discovery of the wonders of crystals.

We are pleased to announce the August 2020 data update of the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) is now available! This third data update of the year brings you an additional 12,269 new structures (12,694 new database entries) and increases the total size of the CSD to over 1,060,000 structures (1,080,000 entries), with 27,298 entries from journal articles published in 2020.

The recent cover of Chemical Science (issue 32) showcased a paper by Moghadam et al. highlighting our new approach to classifying MOF structures for better searching and high-throughput screening.

A few weeks ago we held our second virtual CCDC User Group meeting. While it was timed to best accommodate our community in the Pacific time zone, it was open to all.

Our two primary themes revolved around:

• Innovation in science education, with an emphasis on the remote learning strategies due to Covid-19
• Data sharing and collaboration in drug discovery and development, whether down the hall or across the world