600 scientists to storm @ Lindau 2009

•To examine global challenges approach

OVER 600 young scientists from across the world, will be gathering this month at Lindau, Germany, for the 59th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting slated to commence on June 28, with top on the agenda being the examination of chemical approaches to global challenges.

The organisers disclosed that as part of efforts at converting renewable energies at this century, scientists convening for the 59th Lindau in Lake Constance, Germany will tackle approaches to global challenges, mostly via chemical technologies.
These young and gifted researchers have been drawn from about 66 countries of the world.

According to the Communications officer at Lindau Meetings of Nobel Laureates, Mr. Christian Rapp, technological innovations have facilitated the use of chemistry to make substantial contribution towards the survival of mankind.

During the 21st century, he noted, that chemistry is playing a key role in the efforts to mitigate the effects of global challenges, such as climate change, the need to convert to renewable energies using technologies, develop environmentally sound methods for the production of goods and new materials, as well as efforts at combating diseases.

“This is the conviction with which 23 Nobel Laureates and nearly 600 young researchers from 66 countries will be convening at the 59th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, beginning on the 28th of June,” he asserted.

Participants of this unique, tradition-steeped workshop for the future, Rapp said, will spend a week listening to lectures, discussing topics of current interest, and forging valuable connections.

This year’s meeting, he also said, tends to celebrate the centenary of Count Lennart Bernadotte,” its guiding spirit and co-founder.”

On this occasion, he explained that the Council and the Foundation for the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings are organizing the “Discoveries” exhibit on the Isle of Mainau, which will address the sustainable management of water resources.

The exhibition, he pointed out, will be inaugurated on July 3, the closing day of the meeting, with a panel discussion on “Climate Change and Sustainability,” and will be open to the public for two months.

The issue of sustainability will be a focus at the meeting, just as the Nobel Laureates’ panel on June 30, will be devoted to the ways in which chemistry could contribute to the development of renewable energies.

“… It is likely to be an exciting and controversial event,” he declared, even as emphasis will be placed on subject areas, as essential elements in the search for sustainable chemical processes, including biochemistry of the living cell, analysis of surface reactions and new, new strategies in synthesis.

He further said that many chemical syntheses would not be possible if not for the usually metal-based; catalysts that help reagents along without undergoing modifications themselves.

“This is why catalyst research leads to revolutionary improvements in chemical production. An example is provided by the discovery of the ‘metathesis reaction’, for which the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded in 2005,” he said, among others.

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