With pleasure we look back on a very interesting and active year. The Swiss Chemical Society not only continued and developed its well-established activities but again pushed new initiatives to face todays challenges. We also implemented new sections and networks to incorporate community members whose interest were not covered so far. In addition, the SCS took over the responsibility for existing programs that run now under the umbrella of the SCS and complete its activity portfolio.
2020 was one of the most difficult and challenging years that we have lived through at the personal and professional level and the outbreak of the global Covid-19 pandemic restricted our life in ways we could never have imagined. From March 2020, meetings with larger groups were prohibited and collaboration was therefore limited to virtual meetings. Many of our events had to be cancelled, postponed or conducted virtually and it seems that this situation will continue at least until summer 2021.
The most important, new initiatives in 2020:
- Establish the Section Chemistry and the Environment, incl. CHIMIA issue 3/2020 and a new parallel session at the SCS Fall Meeting on that topic.
- New strategic orientation of SusChem Switzerland and merge the network with the SCS community of Green and Sustainable Chemistry.
- Launch three new networks in the fields of Chemical Ecology, Flow Chemistry and Materials Chemistry and define the mission statements as well as first activities for 2021.
- Develop and promote the two social networks Women in Chemistry and youngSCS, which reinforce and enrich our strong thematic communities.
- Develop the new SCS webpage including the portals for our thematic and social communities as well as a new website template for the efficient handling of our numerous events.
- Furthermore, we stayed actively connected to our partners and co-operated for many projects.
Please enjoy reading through the 2020 annual report that shows again a very active and lively society.
Dr. Alain De Mesmaeker David Spichiger
President Executive Director
The SCS Annual Report is also published in CHIMIA Volume 75, No 1-2/2021
Céline Wittwer, SCS
02.03.2021