Blog January 2021

For this CSD Educators blog it is my pleasure to welcome Marielle Agbahoungbata and to highlight the work she has done with her colleagues to help establish the X-TechLab in Benin. Marielle gained her PhD in inorganic chemistry and since 2014 has been involved in developing a network of crystallographers in Africa. Marielle is the coordinator of the X-TechLab in Benin which aims to provide hands-on training in X-ray techniques in order to provide African scientists with the means to develop solutions for the sustainable development of the continent. The first training session that X-TechLab team organised was held in May 2019 and I was lucky enough to join the second session in Benin in November 2019. That session saw a classroom full of participants from Benin and across Africa learn about X-ray diffraction. During the sessions on the Cambridge Structural Database the students were engaged and eager to learn and I felt privileged to be a part of it.  A few months ago, the CCDC participated in our second X-TechLab training sessions, this time remotely. Again, it was fantastic to see how engaged the students were. In this blog Marielle will tell us more about the X-TechLab and how the team is striving to disseminate science and bridge scientific and entrepreneurship communities through the initiative.

The past year has pushed the importance and challenges of scientific discovery into the spotlight. What lessons can we learn, and what changes can scientific leaders make going forward? In a virtual "fireside chat" the leaders of the CCDC and the RCSB PDB explored this topic, and we share some key learnings from the discussion here.

We started 2020 with a lot of excitement and expectations. After all, we had just achieved a major milestone with the millionth structure in our database, and an additional 60K entries by the end of 2019. We were all geared up with new strategies and plans to tackle the data that would start pouring in in 2020. And yes, we did have a lovely busy start. Little did we know 2020 had plans which none of us could have fathomed. By early March it was "crystal" clear that 2020 had made up its mind to make things difficult for all of us!

It’s a new year and we are planning our CSD Improvements for the upcoming year. Some of us may have already broken our resolutions (oops), but here at CCDC we have resolved to keep improving the database in 2021.

As we kick off the new year, we are delighted to announce the launch of a new workflow with the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) aimed at improving the accessibility of structural data. This initiative forms part of our overall strategy to improve structural data publication processes and ensure data is seamlessly made available through the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD). ACS Publications are a key partner for us and the workflow has already been successfully adopted by Crystal Growth & Design,  Inorganic Chemistry, Organic Letters, Organometallics and more recently The Journal of Organic Chemistry (JOC).