Keynote Speaker
Plenary Speakers
Social Event
Posters & ePosters Guidelines
Hotel & Shuttle
Keynote Speaker
Social Event
Posters & ePosters Guidelines
Hotel & Shuttle
Dear ICDD Members:
Please join us the week of 16 – 20 March 2026 for the Annual ICDD Spring Meetings – a hybrid event. In general, the week will follow the traditional format:
Monday – Committees of the Board and the Board of Directors
Tuesday – Plenary Session, social event, poster session, and dinner
Wednesday – Technical Subcommittees
Thursday – New Features Demonstration, Technical Committee Meeting, and Annual Meeting of the Membership
Friday – Board of Directors
General information regarding the meeting schedule, agendas, plenary speakers, and host hotel will be posted on this website shortly. For those who are unable to travel to ICDD, the Zoom platform will be used for virtual participation.
We are looking forward to a great Spring Meeting! See you at ICDD Headquarters or on Zoom!
-The Staff of ICDD
Welcome from the Executive Director
In keeping with the mission of the ICDD, the annual Spring Meetings will be held at headquarters and through Zoom to provide a forum for our membership and staff to exchange ideas and share information on the promotion and application of materials characterization methods in science and technology by augmenting our typical committee and subcommittee meetings and by hosting a Plenary Session, social event, and Poster Session on Tuesday, 17 March 2026. This year, the social event will be a guided tour at the Philadelphia Art Museum, followed by a Poster Session and dinner at the host hotel, the Best Western Plus Concordville Hotel. ICDD will provide bus transportation to the museum and the hotel.
Committees, Subcommittees, and Task Groups will meet in accordance with the meeting schedule. For the Poster Session, ICDD is soliciting poster presentations and electronic abstracts for this event. You are welcome to present a poster relating to all aspects of X-ray, electron, neutron, or Raman analysis or work relating to ICDD. Learn more in the Members Only area. Please contact Denise Zulli at zulli@icdd.com if you need a password reminder.
We look forward to your attendance and participation at the meetings.
Tom Blanton
ICDD Executive Director
Keynote Speaker
The keynote presentation will be held during the Technical Committee Meeting on Thursday, 19 March, beginning at 9:30 am.
Dr. Diego G. Lamas
UNSAM-CONICET
ITECA Institute
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Biography
Dr. Diego G. Lamas (Ph.D. in Physics, University of Buenos Aires, 1999) is a Principal Researcher at the Argentine National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and an Associate Professor at the National University of San Martín (UNSAM). He is the Director of the Institute of Emerging Technologies and Applied Sciences (ITECA, UNSAM-CONICET) and Head of the Laboratory of Applied Crystallography. This laboratory is an open-access X-ray diffraction/scattering facility serving the scientific community and has been selected by the ICDD to receive support under the FAIR initiative.
Dr. Lamas co-founded the Argentine Association of Crystallography (AACr) in 2004 and served as its President from 2011 to 2014. In 2014, he coordinated Argentina’s activities for the International Year of Crystallography. He chaired the Organizing Committee of the Argentine Crystal Growing Competition for High Schools from 2014 to 2019, a period during which he organized 255 short courses in crystallography for high-school teachers, reaching all provinces of Argentina annually.
Dr. Lamas also served as Vice President (2013–2016) and President (2016–2018) of the Latin American Crystallographic Association (LACA). He has promoted numerous postgraduate schools and courses across Latin America and has been a member of the Commission on Crystallographic Teaching of the International Union of Crystallography since 2014. Finally, Diego joined the ICDD as a member last year. He is deeply committed to strengthening the international crystallography community through research, training, and global collaboration.
9:05 – 9:40 am
Dr. Harry Westfahl Jr.
Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory (LNLS), Brazil
Abstract Title: Science and Innovation at the Sirius Light Source
Virtual Presentation
Biography
Harry Westfahl Jr. is the Director of the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory (LNLS) at CNPEM, a position he has held since 2020. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil, where he completed his undergraduate studies. After postdoctoral research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Ames Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy, he joined LNLS as a researcher in 2001. Harry has held several leadership roles at LNLS, including Scientific Director (2013–2019) and Deputy Scientific Director (2011–2012). Since 2013, he has led the design and construction of the beamlines for Sirius, Brazil’s fourth-generation synchrotron light source. His research interests are focused on condensed matter physics and the development of advanced synchrotron instrumentation, contributing to advancements in beamline optics, detectors, and experimental techniques.
9:40 – 10:15 am
Dr. Joel Reid
Canadian Light Source, Canada
Biography
Joel is an industrial senior scientist in the Industrial Services Group (ISG) at Canadian Light Source (CLS), a third-generation synchrotron facility in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where he has been working since 2011. Joel helps clients from industry and academia use the synchrotron, predominantly with powder diffraction and other scattering techniques, to find solutions to challenging problems. He received his B.Sc.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Engineering Physics from Queen’s University at Kingston, Ontario. Joel’s prior work experience includes over two years at Millenium Biologix Corporation (currently Octane Orthobiologics Inc. in Kingston), working on development of calcium phosphate-based bone replacement biomaterials, and over four years on the editorial team of the Publication Department at the International Centre for Diffraction Data (ICDD), in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania. Joel is an ICDD member and currently serves as an external instructor for the ICDD Rietveld Refinement Clinic. He is a co-author of roughly 50 peer-reviewed papers.10:45 – 11:20 am
Dr. Saul Lapidus
Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, USA
Biography
Saul Lapidus is the lead beamline scientist at the high-resolution beamline 11-BM-B, which he has run since 2014. He is also developing the new high-energy versatile beamline
11-ID-D, which will be going into service later this year. He received his PhD from Stony Brook University, while also working at the NSLS and assisting at beamline X16C there. His expertise is in the structural characterization and analysis of materials through powder
X-ray diffraction and pair distribution function analysis, with a particular focus on high-resolution diffraction/ab initio structure determination and how long-range disorder and defects couple with materials properties.
11:25 – 12:00 pm
Dr. Andy Fitch
ESRF, France
Biography
Andy Fitch obtained his doctorate at the Department of Inorganic Chemistry, Oxford, under Brian Fender. After 5 years at the ILL in Grenoble he joined Keele University as a lecturer in physical and inorganic chemistry and joint appointment with the Synchrotron Radiation Source, Daresbury Laboratory, where he was involved with the development of the powder diffraction program. He returned to Grenoble, to the ESRF, where he is responsible for the high resolution powder diffraction beamline, originally built at BM16, rebuilt at ID31, and now operating at ID22. His research interests are in powder crystallography, particularly organic systems. He was secretary of the IUCr commission on powder diffraction from 1999 to 2008, and has been a member of the EPDIC committee since 1998. He is a co-editor for IUCrJ.
Social Event
ICDD members, staff, and guests are invited to our 2026 Spring Meetings Social Event on Tuesday, March 17th!
Schedule:
Posters
Poster Session Information:
The Technical Committee Chair, Charlene Greenwood, encourages members to submit posters or displays for the poster session. The poster session will be held on Tuesday evening at the host hotel from 5:30-6:30pm, in conjunction with the cocktail hour before dinner.
Poster Guidelines:
Poster boards are 40 inches high, 60 inches wide, and about 1/4 inch thick, comprised of foam board. Pins will be available to attach your poster to the foam boards. Please post your presentations approximately 15 minutes prior to the start of the session.
Guidelines for Preparing Abstracts:
Abstracts will be accessible on the ICDD website. If you do not want your abstract posted, please note your request in your email when you submit it.
Abstracts must not exceed one page in length and must include the title, author(s), affiliation(s), and text. To provide uniformity, it is recommended that abstracts be prepared in Microsoft® Word, according to the following guidelines:
Abstract Format
- Paper Size: 8.5 x 11 inches; A4 paper must be formatted for 8.5 x 11 inches
- Size: Entire abstract, including title, author(s), affiliations(s), and text, must fit on one 8.5×11” page. Please allow a top margin of 1.5” and 1” margins on all other sides
- Font: Times or Times New Roman, 12 point
- Title: bold, centered, all uppercase (except where lowercase letters are needed for clarity)
- Text:
- Should appear flush left; do not indent
- Leave one blank line between the title and the author(s)
- Author and affiliation, mixed upper and lowercase, centered; if there is more than one author, underline the presenting author’s name
- Leave two blank lines before beginning text
- A blank line is recommended between new paragraphs
- Use line spacing sufficiently large enough to allow the abstract to be read easily, including subscripts, superscripts, and Greek letters
Submission
The preferred method of submitting your abstracts is in a PDF format via this ICDD submission form.
However, if you require an alternative method, please contact Elizabeth Dempsey – Email: dempsey@icdd.com or Tel: +610-325-9814.
Abstracts should be submitted no later than 23 February 2026.
ePosters
In addition to the traditional poster session on Tuesday evening, poster presenters are invited to submit an electronic file of their poster for viewing at ICDD headquarters throughout the meeting week. An ePoster station will be positioned in the front lobby of the ICDD building, giving members the opportunity to thoroughly study the poster presentations.
The following are guidelines for formatting and submitting your ePoster to ICDD:
EPOSTER FORMAT:
- Your poster file must be in full landscape format and be one page only.
- Create your poster in PowerPoint (or equivalent).
- Title: Bold, Center, Mixed upper and lower case.
- Author(s), Affiliation(s), and Contact Author email Address: Center directly under Title. Leave one blank line after the Contact Author’s email Address before beginning text of poster.
- It is strongly recommended to use a 16:9 aspect ratio (widescreen), with a simple and clear typeface (Arial, Arial black, Calibri…) and regular text size not less than 28 for the body of the different sections (depending on the amount of data you will be adding and the design you are using). Try to avoid the use of red or green in fonts or backgrounds, as they are colors that are difficult to read.
- Images/pictures or graphs, the suggested minimum resolution is 300 dpi. To check that they appear correctly on the final/printed version, zoom in at 100% and check the images, pictures, and graphs. It is better to use high-quality images/graphs when creating the poster and then convert it to PDF.
- Provide clear labels or headings for each section of your presentation to avoid confusion.
SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS:
- Convert to PDF format.
- PDF file cannot exceed 10MB.
- Email the PDF as an attachment to Elizabeth Dempsey (dempsey@icdd.com) by 9 March 2026.
Hotel & Shuttle
Host Hotel Information: Best Western Plus Concordville Hotel
675 Conchester Highway, Glen Mills, Pennsylvania,19342, USA
Book Online before February 15th
Toll-Free Phone Number (US & Canada)
1(800) 780-7234
Hotel Direct Phone Number
(610) 358-9400
ICDD has chosen the Best Western Plus Concordville Hotel as the host hotel for Spring Meetings. The room rate for our group is $129/night plus 6% PA State Tax and 3% County Tax. The room rate includes breakfast and daily shuttle service to and from the hotel and ICDD. If calling the hotel to book your reservation, please let them know you are part of the “ICDD Room Block”.
Book before February 15 for the group rate.
Check-In: 4:00 pm Eastern Time
Check-Out: 11:00 am Eastern Time