Mestrelab at SMASH… And, Chamonix!
So, I have been threatening a blog about SMASH for a while, and it is time I finally deliver on that (I think it was Moliere, but don’t quote me as I am not sure, who wrote: ‘All men are equal in their promises, it is their deeds that make them different’).
SMASH (Small Molecules Are Still Hot – more on this conference here) was held for the second time (first time was 2007) at Chamonix, France, a fantastic location at the foot of Mont Blanc. I am going to focus on what we did there, so for more information about the conference, visit the SMASH web page or read Stan’s post about SMASH on his blog entry of 4th October.
Mestrelab and Modgraph shared a User Meeting and a stand during the conference, and we were strongly represented there, with 9 people in total. The User Meeting was well attended, with about 40 people making an appearance (although not all braved the whole program 
. We took the opportunity, both there and during the conference at the stand, to present many of the new goodies in our software, as well as to discuss some of our plans for the immediate future. These were some of the topics which proved most attractive/interesting to attendees, both from industry and academia:
- Our newly released MS plugin for Mnova – many people bought into the idea of being able to handle both NMR and LC/GC/MS in the same platform. I will not expand, as I have written quite a bit on this already in previous posts.
- The new functionalities in Mnova NMR, particularly the Data Analysis module, with its applications for Reaction Monitoring (more on that another day), DOSY, relaxation, etc.; GSD, and its many applications for qNMR and spectral analysis; the new Line Fitting module; and many others. You can go here to find out more or read some of the articles in Carlos’s blog.
- Our plans for a spectral DataBase (more on that later)
- Our plans for an Automatic Structure Verification module (again, I will post on that later, it is still a bit premature, but watch this space, as they say!)
- The significant improvements in NMR prediction announced by Modgraph, which are incorporated in their NMRPredict and our NMRPredict Desktop products.
So, a big thank you goes to all those who spent time with us during the conference, either at the User Meeting or at the stand. We do appreciate the continuous support.
Chamonix, what a place!
Of course, if you did not, that is understandable, with all the attractions of such a fantastic location luring you away from the conference venue. How could we compete with Aiguille du Midi, Mer de Glace, etc.? If you have never been to Chamonix, make sure you make it there. Maybe for SMASH 2011?
The photographs in the article fail to show how spectacular this place is (not helped by some of them having Pablo or myself spoiling them!). What you can see behind Pablo is indeed the Mont Blanc (at 4,810m, the top of the traditional Europe – I am qualifying it because I don’t want to get into new geography discussions about whether the Caucasus is in Europe or not, it is already quite a while since I went to school and you cannot teach an old dog new tricks!) taken from Aiguille du Midi (3,842m easily reached by cable car, don’t think this kid climbed up there! – of course, I did climb on foot to where my photo was taken, in Chamonix town centre BTW, it is well worth it looking at the exhibition of how this place was built, wonder what the Health and Safety executive would have made about that). The landscape shows a view of the Alps from the Aiguille, with the highest in the photo being, I believe, Monte Rosa, the second highest peak in the Alps at 4,634 m. If you don’t know why it is called Monte Rosa, you should look at it from Milano on a winter morning!
Can I try the new functionality or find out more about your plans or get the User Meeting presentations?
Of course you can! Contact us with any questions you have, get the User Meeting presentations here, or download Mnova NMR and MS here.
