Programme

The following timetable outlines the International AIC School 2026 scientific programme.

Over four days, participants will explore crystallography from its fundamental principles to advanced applications through lectures, computational sessions, and discussions led by leading experts.

Sessions provide participants with the opportunity to present their work through posters and short oral presentations.

Day 1 - Monday 20 July 2026 - From Diffraction to Structure Determination

09:00 – 09:30 Registration
09:30 – 09:45 Welcome and Opening Remarks

Morning Session (Chair: Angela Altomare)

09:45 – 11:00 Opening Lecture – Carmelo Giacovazzo (CNR-IC, Bari, Italy) – The Phase Problem in Crystallography: A Challenge Worthy of a Nobel Prize
11:00 – 11:30 Coffee Break
11:30 – 12:30 Dritan Siliqi (CNR-IC, Bari, Italy) – Structural Biology: An Amazing World
12:30 – 14:00 Lunch

Afternoon Session (Chairs: Cinzia Giannini, Davide Altamura)

14:00 – 15:00 Marco Mazzorana (Diamond Light Source, Ltd., Didcot, UK) – X-ray Diffraction: Principles and Experimental Techniques
15:00 – 16:00 Anna Moliterni (CNR-IC, Bari, Italy) – Solving Small-Molecule Structures Using Single-Crystal Diffraction
16:00 – 16:30 Coffee Break – Poster Session
16:30 – 17:30 Dritan Siliqi (CNR-IC, Bari, Italy) – Structural Studies of Proteins: From Early Techniques to Modern Approaches
17:30 – 18:10 Michele Zema (Department of Earth and Geoenvironmental Sciences, University of Bari, Italy) – Advancing Crystallography Through Education and Infrastructure
18:10 – 18:30 Short presentations of 5 minutes each

– Giuseppe Conti (University of Insubria, Como, Italy) Understanding the role of reactants purity on formation and stability of low-D perovskites: when NMR and Crystallography appear to clash
– Erika Manicone (University of Bari; IC-CNR, Bari, Italy) Structural characterization of bioactive antibacterial nanostructured surfaces by combined transmission and reflection X-ray scattering with high brilliance laboratory micro-sources
– Stefano Righi (University of Milan, Italy) Fast and Accurate Modelling of Harmonic and Anharmonic Motions in Molecular Crystals from Classical Molecular Dynamics
– Mauro De Feudis (University of Bari; IC-CNR, Bari, Italy) Pair Distribution Function Analysis of Crystalline and Amorphous Lactose

19:30 – Welcome party

Day 2 - Tuesday 21 July 2026 - Structure Solution and Refinement: Methods and Software

Morning Session (Chair: Aurelia Falcicchio)

09:00 – 10:00 Angela Altomare (IC-CNR, Bari, Italy) – X-ray Powder Diffraction for Structure Determination
10:00 – 11:00 Enrico Mugnaioli (Department of Earth Sciences, University of Pisa, Italy) – Electron Diffraction in Structure Determination
11:00 – 11:30 Coffee Break – Poster Session
11:30 – 12:30 Benedetta Carrozzini (CNR-IC, Bari, Italy) – SIR: Versatile Software for Single-Crystal Structure Solution (Software presentation)
12:30 – 14:00 Lunch

Afternoon Session (Chair: Paolo Mazzeo)

14:00 – 15:00 Florian Kleemiss (Institut für Anorganische Chemie, RWTH Aachen, Germany) – Olex2: An Easy-to-Use Program for Solving and Refining Small-Molecule Crystal Structures
15:00 – 16:00 Corrado Cuocci (CNR-IC, Bari, Italy) – EXPO: Software for Structure Solution from Powder Diffraction Data (Software presentation)
16:00 – 16:30 Coffee Break – Poster Session
16:30 – 17:30 Enrico Mugnaioli (Department of Earth Sciences, University of Pisa, Italy), Benedetta Carrozzini (IC-CNR, Bari, Italy) – Structure Solution from Electron Diffraction Using SIR
17:30 – 18:30 Benny Danilo Belviso (CNR-IC, Bari, Italy) – Software Packages for Biological Macromolecules Crystallography (Software presentation)

Day 3 - Wednesday 22 July 2026 - Methods, Techniques and Computation in Crystallography

Morning Session (Chair: Emanuela Schingaro)

09:00 – 10:00 Cinzia Giannini (CNR-IC, Bari, Italy) – Diffraction from Advanced Materials and Nanostructures
10:00 – 11:00 Rocco Caliandro (CNR-IC, Bari, Italy) – Pair Distribution Function (PDF) Analysis: Methodology and Applications
11:00 – 11:30 Coffee Break – Poster Session
11:30 – 12:30 Paolo P. Mazzeo (Department of Chemical Sciences, Life Sciences and Enviromental Sustainability, University of Parma, Italy) – Linking Crystal Structure to Physical and Chemical Properties
12:30 – 14:00 Lunch

Afternoon Session (Chair: Sabrina Nazzareni)

14:00 – 15:00 Francesco Scattarella (CNR-IC, Bari, Italy) – SUNBIM: A Software Suite for the Analysis of Nanoscale Materials (Software Presentation)
15:00 – 16:00 Andy Maloney (CCDC, Cambridge, UK) – The Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) and Beyond (Software Presentation)
16:00 – 16:30 Coffee Break – Poster Session
16:30 – 18:00 Davide Ceresoli (Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie Chimiche “G. Natta” – SCITEC-CNR, Milan, Italy) – The Quantum ESPRESSO Package: DFT for Crystallography (Software presentation)
18:00 – 18:30 Short presentations of 5 minutes each

– Davide Lucchini (University of Padova, Italy) Synthesis and structural characterisation of rhenium(I) complexes with N-heterocyclic carbenes
– Andrea Griesi (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy) Understanding local crystallography in solar cells materials with scanning electron diffraction using unsupervised machine learning
– Francesco Ferella (INFN, L’Aquila, Italy) Crystal contaminations and isotopic enrichment in astroparticle physics experiments: characterization and quantification by inorganic mass spectrometry
– Fabiana Crucitti (University of Bologna, Italy) Structural and morphological characterization of bio-inspired superhydrophobic coatings for sustainable agricultural applications
– Fabrizio Mastrolorito (University of Bari, Italy) POWnet: Improving X-Ray Powder Diffraction Spectra through Deep Learning
– Sashank Bharatham Vijayaraghavan (University College Cork, Ireland) Solubility trends and nucleation of nucleotides in a binary mixture of solvents

19:30 Social Dinner

Day 4 - Thursday 23 July 2026 - The Multifaceted and Interdisciplinary Character of Crystallography

Morning Session (Chair: Aurelia Falcicchio)

09:00 – 10:00 Maria Lacalamita (Department of Earth and Geoenvironmental Sciences, University of Bari, Italy) – Crystallography of Natural Materials
10:00 – 11:00 Fabia Gozzo (Excelsus Structural Solutions, Villigen, Switzerland) – X-Ray Diffraction and Crystallography for the Characterization of Pharmaceuticals
11:00 – 11:30 Coffee Break – Poster Session
11:30 – 12:30 Giovanna Agrosì (Department of Earth and Geoenvironmental Sciences, University of Bari, Italy) – Ideal versus Real Crystals: Structural Defects
12:30 – 14:00 Lunch

Afternoon Session (Chair: Marco Mazzorana)

14:00 – 15:00 Rocco Caliandro (CNR-IC, Bari, Italy) – Artificial Intelligence for Crystal Structure Solution
15:00 – 16:00 Benny Danilo Belviso (CNR-IC, Bari, Italy) – Protein crystallization: understanding and tackling the bottleneck
16:00 – 16:30 Coffee Break – Poster Session
16:30 – 17:10 Vittoria Nanna (CNR-IC, Bari, Italy) – Modern Computational Tools for Drug Design
17:10 – 17:40 Angela Altomare (IC-CNR, Bari, Italy) – IUCr Journals: Disseminating High-Quality Crystallographic Research
17:40 – 18:00 IUCr Journals Best Poster Prize and Closing Remarks