Jordi Rius, ICMAB researcher at the Crystallography group has been awarded with the "Gold Badge of the Specialized Group of Crystallography (GE3C)" belonging to the Royal Spanish Societies of Physics and Chemistry (RSEF and RSEQ).
This award is its highest award and is granted by decision of the Board of the GE3C group at the proposal of any member of it, being subsequently ratified by its Assembly. The award aims to show recognition to those people who have shown exceptional dedication to the promotion of crystallography and, in particular, to the promotion of the GE3C Specialized Group.
"This award is important for me, since it recognizes the importance of developing new more powerful structure solution methods in Crystallography. In my case, the discovery in 1993 of a new phasing method based on the maximization of the modulus sum function and its implentation in the computer program XLENS allowed solving the crystal structure of a number of new minerals, layered materials and complex zeolites by X-ray powder diffraction methods. Part of the success was undoubtely the possibility of working with leading Spanish and foreign laboratories due to the novelty of the approach" says Jordi Rius.
"I’m happy about this award because it also recognizes the importance of organizing Schools and Courses on Crystallographic topics. In the present case, for the promotion of ‘Powder Diffraction’ among Spanish students" he adds. "Connected to this, I would like to express my gratitude to the organizers of the “Rietveld School” held in the University Jaume I in Castelló for more than ten years" concludes Rius.
The awards ceremony was during the XXXIX Reunión Bienal de Química (RSEQ) in Zaragoza, on 29 June 2023.
A career devoted to crystallography and X-ray Diffraction
Prof. Jordi Rius (Palleiro) studied Geology in Barcelona and has a PhD in Natural Sciences from the ‘Philipps-Universität’ (Marburg, Germany) (1980). He has more than 200 published articles in the field of Crystallography, Mineralogy and Materials Science.
He works in CSIC since 1987 (where he became Reserach Professor in 2003) at the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB), being since 1992 the responsible of the X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) Lab. He has been lecturer on XRD methods in many courses and workshops worldwide, principally at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, the UAB (Bellaterra) and the UJI (Castelló).
The main research field is the development of structure solution XRD methodology (powders, surfaces and single-crystals). Most relevant contributions on this subject are reviewed in the first number of IUCrJ (2014, open access) entitled “Application of Patterson-function direct methods to materials characterization”. Noteworthy was the discovery in 1993 of a special type of direct methods based on the 'origin-free modulus sum function (SM)' which were implemented in the highly successful program XLENS and allowed solving complex structures of layered materials and zeolites from powder data.
From 2011 to 2018, he developed the synchrotron through-the-substrate microdiffraction technique (tts). The description of the tts technique is described in the second number of the IUCrJ (2015, open access). tts is particularly useful for the in-situ characterisation of polished thin-sections on glass substrates which has wide application in Mineralogy, Petrology, Cultural Heritage and Materials Science. He has been member of the Spanish Crystallography Committee for many years and of the IUCr Commision on Powder Diffraction. He is member of the Specialized Group of Crystallography (Grupo Especializado de Cristalografía) and fellow (and also member of the Board of Directors for 4 years) of the ‘International Centre for Diffraction Data (ICDD, USA)’. He was co-editor of the European Journal of Mineralogy for 8 years.
You can find more information about his scientific work and collaboration in his ORCID website.