Abstract
The 17th International Congress on Photosynthesis will be held from August 7 to 12, 2016 in Maastricht, The Netherlands. The congress will include an opening reception, 15 plenary lectures, 28 scientific symposia, many poster sessions, displays by scientific companies, excursions, congress dinner, social activities, and the first photosynthesis soccer world championship. See http://www.ps2016.com/. The congress is organized as an official event of the International Society of Photosynthesis Research (see http://www.photosynthesisresearch.org/).
Life on earth is almost entirely fuelled by light from the sun, a nearly endless source of free energy. The process of photosynthesis transforms light energy into chemical energy in plants, algae, cyanobacteria and anoxygenic photosynthetic bacteria, inhabiting nearly all ecosystems of our Earth. Photosynthesis, which fixes carbon on a massive scale, has shaped our planet and photosynthetic organisms provide all our food and oxygen; it is also the basis of nearly all our energy resources. The evolution of photosynthesis is widely seen as the benchmark for widespread, sustainable life on Earth; to understand it is the most exciting and fundamental quest of science. Such an understanding is also crucial for us to address the three critical challenges facing our world: food, energy, and climate change.
Although the emphasis of the congress will be on the basic understanding of the photosynthesis process, we plan to address its impact on the present and the future life on Earth.
The International Congress on Photosynthesis has been held on a 3-year basis in North America, Europe, Asia and Oceania, and the last one (16th) was in St. Louis, USA; it was organized by Bob Blankenship and Don Ort (see Blankenship et al. 2013). For information on some of the earlier congresses, see Govindjee (2004), Foyer (2006) and Govindjee and Yoo (2007). In all cases the goal was to bring together scientists working on photosynthesis from all over the world. After the 2016 meeting in Maastricht the congress will continue on a 4-year basis in order not to clash with the biannual Gordon conferences in photosynthesis.
This will be the first time that the Photosynthesis international conference is being organized in The Netherlands, a country, which has made important contributions to the field of photosynthesis. We do note that many international scientists did attend the second Western European conference, organized by Jan B. Thomas and J. H. C. Goedheer, which was held, in 1965, in Woudschoten, Zeist, The Netherlands. All of us are aware of the pioneering work of Jan Ingenhousz, who demonstrated in his famous experiments in the 18th century that plants need light to make oxygen. And everyone knows the famous Kok cycle, named after Bessel Kok, for oxygen evolution; it explained the period 4 oscillations in oxygen evolution as a function of flash number, discovered by Pierre Joliot in 1969. Kok was also the discoverer of the reaction center chlorophyll a P700, while he was in Wageningen. Currently, this cycle receives a lot of attention again, because it is at the basis of oxygenic photosynthesis, and it will have a prominent place at the 17th Congress in Maastricht. Extremely important contributions were made by Louis N. M. Duysens, who, sadly passed away in 2015. His 1952 Ph.D. thesis on “Excitation Energy Transfer in Photosynthesis” is a classic, where the concept of reaction center pigment that he called “P” was born. Among his many important discoveries, a major one has been the alternating effect of green (photosystem II light) and red (photosystem I light) on the redox state of cytochrome f in red algae, which firmly established the now familiar model of Photosystems I and II acting in series.
The 2016 conference will be held in Maastricht, the oldest city in The Netherlands, once ruled by the Romans, on the river Meuse (Maas in Dutch). It has a wonderful atmosphere for socializing in the evening after the conference with plenty of restaurants and bars with terraces to eat and drink and enjoy life. The city has been nominated to become the cultural capital of Europe in 2018 but it is also well known because of the Maastricht Treaty, which has for instance led to the creation of the single European currency, the Euro. See Fig. 1 for a view of the city.
Maastricht Exhibition & Congress Centre (MECC) is located just outside the historical center and most hotels and restaurants in Maastricht can easily be reached by foot from there (see Fig. 2 for a photograph of the MECC facility). However, if you are not able or willing to walk, you will be able to rent a bike (a great Dutch way of life) or to take a bus, which will be free for all the participants during the entire conference. See Figs. 3 and 4 for photographs of the Chateau where the conference dinner will be held and the city, respectively; Fig. 5 shows a view of Bonbonniere, where a party is planned on Tuesday, August 9, 2016.
Speakers from around the world are expected to present their most recent results, either in plenary lectures or in one of the 28 symposia that are being held in four parallel sessions. In each session, we will have two invited speakers and a discussion leader who will select three additional oral presentations from the submitted poster abstracts. In addition each discussion leader will chair a discussion session of 50 min in which many of the posters will be discussed. Poster presenters are, therefore, encouraged to prepare a short poster flash in case their poster is selected for discussion. We are very happy with the fact that all the posters can be up during the entire conference; this will permit lots of discussion among the participants. There will also be many commercial exhibits from well-known vendors, easily accessible during breaks and poster sessions.
We hope to see many of you next year and we hope there will be a lot of interactions both within and across the borders between different research fields, and we expect many new collaborations to be started. We also hope that this meeting will contribute a little bit towards finding solutions for our global challenges. But besides that we wish you all a great time at the conference and one or two of its satellite meetings. Both of us and the members of the entire program committee (see Appendix) encourage you to take a few extra days to visit other parts of The Netherlands or the surrounding countries, which are very close to Maastricht. On behalf of the various committees associated with the congress (see Appendix and/or our website http://www.ps2016.com) and Pauwels Conference Organizers (PCO, Maastricht) we welcome you all to Maastricht next year.
We end this announcement by mentioning a few dates: Registration for the Congress starts on February 1, 2016, deadline for early registration is June 1, 2016, and the deadline for abstract submission is April 1, 2016.
References
Blankenship RE, Musick J, Cooley J, Dutcher S, Govindjee (2013) An invitation to the 16th international congress on photosynthesis research in 2013: opportunities and challenges in the 21st century. Photosynth Res 115:215–218
Foyer CH (2006) Photosynthesis coming of age to meet the needs of the 21st century: an invitation to the 14th international congress on photosynthesis research in 2007. Photosynth Res 89:3–6
Govindjee (2004) A list of photosynthesis conferences and of edited books in photosynthesis. Photosynth Res 80:447–460
Govindjee, Yoo H (2007) The International Society of Photosynthesis Research (ISPR) and its associated International Congress on Photosynthesis (ICP): a pictorial report. Photosynth Res 91:95–106
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Kevin Redding and John Golbeck and all the current and former members of the Executive Committee of the International Society of Photosynthesis Research (ISPR) for the support they have provided us. In particular we mention Bill Rutherford, who is actively involved in helping us prepare and finalize the scientific program. We have also received a lot of help and feedback from the members of the various committees listed in the Appendix. Without the help of Pauwels Conference Organizers (PCO), it would have been impossible to organize this conference. Netty Hoefakker is thanked for help in preparing this announcement and we would also like to acknowledge the contribution of Jeremy Harbinson.
We are very much indebted to Gyözö Garab for many helpful suggestions. We give special thanks to Bob Blankenship, who was the main organizer of PS16, for his valuable advice; he has been extremely open and willing to share with us helpful information that he could think of, within only several hours after we asked him. Finally, we thank Govindjee for inviting us to write this “Announcement”, and for his suggestions on the original manuscript.
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Invited, edited, and approved for publication by Govindjee, Associate Editor, Photosynthesis Research.
Appendices
Appendix
Congress co-chairs
Herbert van Amerongen (Wageningen University, The Netherlands) and Roberta Croce (VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands).
Program committee
Roberta Croce (chair; VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Herbert van Amerongen (Wageningen University, The Netherlands), Bill Rutherford (former president of the ISPR; Imperial College, UK), Egbert Boekema (University of Groningen, The Netherlands), Jan Dekker (VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Huub de Groot (Leiden University, The Netherlands), Rienk van Grondelle (VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Jeremy Harbinson (Wageningen University, The Netherlands), Shizue Matsubara (Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany), and Paul Struik (Wageningen University, The Netherlands).
Local arrangements and coordinating committee
Herbert van Amerongen (chair; Wageningen University, The Netherlands), Roberta Croce, (VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Hans van Gorkom, (Leiden University, The Netherlands), Netty Hoefakker (Wageningen University, The Netherlands), René Klein Lankhorst (BioSolar Cells, Wageningen, The Netherlands), Anjali Pandit (Leiden University, The Netherlands), Claire Remacle, University of Liege, Belgium), Marianne Selten (BioSolar Cells, Wageningen, The Netherlands), Ivo van Stokkum (VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Carel Windt (Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany), and Xinyou Yin (Wageningen University, The Netherlands).
European advisory committee
Eva-Mari Aro (University of Turku, Finland), Henk Van As (Wageningen University, The Netherlands), Roberto Bassi (University of Verona, Italy), Pierre Cardol (University of Liège, Belgium), Holger Dau (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany), Jaume Flexas (Universitat de les Illes Baleares, Spain), Christine Foyer (University of Leeds, UK), Raoul Frese (VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Gyözö Garab (Biological Research Centre, Szeged, Hungary), Bernard Genty (The Centre Energie Atomique et Energies Alternatives, Cadarache, France), Howard Griffiths (University of Cambridge, UK), Michael Hippler (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany), Alfred Holzwarth (Max Planck Institute for Bioinorganic Chemistry, Germany), Joanna Kargul (University of Warsaw, Poland), Diana Kirilovsky (CEA Saclay, France), Anja Krieger (CEA Saclay, France), Ulo Niinemets (Estonian University of Life Sciences, Estonia), Martin Parry (Rothamsted Research Station, UK), Tomas Polivka (University of South Bohemia, Czech Republic), Matthias Rögner (Ruhr University Bochum, Germany), Alexander Ruban (Queen Mary University of London, UK), Leonas Valkunas (Vilnius University, Lithuania), Andreas Weber (Heinrich Heine University, Germany).
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van Amerongen, H., Croce, R. Invitation to the 17th international congress on photosynthesis research in 2016: photosynthesis in a changing world. Photosynth Res 127, 281–284 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11120-015-0202-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11120-015-0202-1