Report on the 28th POMs       

The 28th POMs was held at Concordia University, in Montreal on November 3-5, 2000.  Four previous POMs had been held in Montreal, all at McGill University, so this was the first one to be held at Concordia.

The meeting was organized by Ossie Tee & Heidi Muchall (Concordia University), along with Jeff Keillor (University of Montreal). Tim Gadosy (formerly of Concordia) made some of the initial arrangements, started the fund-raising, and took the digital photos.

The 98 participants  came mainly from Ontario and Quebec, with a few from B.C., Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, 16 from the U.S.A. and 5 from the U.K. They were composed of 36 faculty, government, and industry researchers, 51 graduate students and 11 post-doctoral fellows. Since the involvement of students and post-docs in POMs is always strongly encouraged, it was very gratifying that they made up almost 2/3 of the participants.

The scientific program consisted of 25 talks which were given on Saturday (am and pm) and Sunday (am) in the de Sève Theatre of the McConnell Building.  Also, there was a poster session with 32 presentations, given from 5 pm to 7 pm on Saturday evening, in the atrium of the same building. As usual, the talks and posters were of high quality and they encompassed a wide variety of topics, including biochemical processes, enzyme mimics, liquid crystals, industrial processes, reactions in micelles, pesticide degradation, photochemical processes, proton-transfer reactions, spectral and theoretical studies, and unstable intermediates.

The special guest was Professor Claude Bernasconi from University of California, Santa Cruz, who spoke about his research on "Understanding the Reactivity in Carbanion-forming Reactions

For any who were in town by 2.15 pm on Friday, Nov. 3, there was a very interesting talk in the Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry, of Concordia University, on "Reactions across Phase Boundaries" given by Dr. Brian Cox of Astra-Zeneca Agrochemicals, U.K.. The talk gave ample proof that a knowledge of reaction dynamics and reaction mechanisms can be very important in an industrial context.

The best three student posters, chosen by an "International Panel of Judges", were those presented by

Richard Burrell (Syracuse - Baldwin), David Magri (UWO - Workentin) and Brad Sheeler (Carleton & NRC - Ingold).

On the social side, there was a Registration-Mixer on Friday evening at McKibbin's Pub, attended by ~80 participants.

On Saturday night the banquet was held at the Zen Restaurant, in the basement of the Hotel Omni. The arrangement and location of the room was not appropriate for after-dinner speeches, and so the diners were spared from that ritual. Ossie Tee had an exciting time when VISA refused to authorise the amount for the dinner on his personal credit card. After getting an earful from his wife, Sue, VISA agreed to let it through!