EUROMAT 2009, the eleventh in the biennial series of FEMS EUROMAT conferences took place at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SECC) in Glasgow on 7-10 September 2009. 
The Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, London, looked after the organisation of the event. Its Chief Executive, Bernie Rickinson and its Conference Department, including Melanie Boyce and Debbie Keogh in particular, are to be congratulated for making the event so successful, especially in view of the straightened state of the global economy at present.
Over 1600 abstracts were submitted from more than 50 different countries.  The accompanying illustration provides a breakdown of the 17 main sources of presentations in comparison with the three previous conferences in the series. The countries included such distant places as Japan, Brazil, South Korea and China.  Although the attendance level in Glasgow was somewhat lower than that for the three preceding events, the meeting nevertheless attracted over 1200 delegates of whom approximately 10 % were from industry.
The Scientific Committee for EUROMAT was led by Sybrand van der Zwaag of the Technical University of Delft. It also included Elisabeth Aeby-Gautier of Nancy University, Aldo R. Boccaccini of Imperial College, London, Paloma Fernández of Universidad Complutense, Madrid, and Pedro D. Portella of the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing in Berlin.  They produced a conference featuring 64 different symposia in 6 major topic areas: Functional Materials; Structural Materials; Processing; Characterisation and Modelling; Applications; and Education.

EUROMAT 2009 was a landmark event in the European materials calendar.  With over 850 oral presentations, including 94 highlight lectures, 45 keynotes and 6 plenary lectures, up to 18 parallel sessions were required to accommodate everything. There were also two 2-day poster sessions.
Side events included two short courses, held on Sunday 6 September. One, entitled “Material Selection for Design and for the Environment” was presented by Mike Ashby. The other, by George Kaptay, was “Interfacial Forces, Energy and Phenomena”.  There was also an Exhibition with over 20 displays.
Delegates were offered a choice of conference dinners on the evening of Tuesday 8 September. The more formal of these took place in the famous Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery which is the fourth most popular visitor attraction in the UK. The alternative dinner took place in the Old Fruitmarket. Both were fantastic venues for a dinner and everyone had a most enjoyable time.
Arrangements are already in hand for EUROMAT 2011. This is being organised by FEMS Member Societies in France (SF2M) and Italy (AIM). It will take place in Montpellier, France, on 12-15 September 2011. Jean-Marc Chaix of CNRS, Grenoble, has been appointed as the Chairman of Scientific Committee for the conference and its first meeting took place in Glasgow on 9 September.

For Information contact:
Dr Paul McIntyre, FEMS Secretary
The Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, 1 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5DB, England
E-mail: paul.mcintyre@iom3.org