American Biophysical Society has awarded Professor Greta Pifat Mrzljak, PhD, with the Emily M. Gray Award for her outstanding record of accomplishments and leadership of the triennial international summer schools and textbooks on Supramolecular Structure and Function. This is the first time ever that Biophysical Society has presented this award to a non US laureate, which is a remarkable recognition for Croatia and the Ruđer Bošković Institute as well.

The 5th SEE-GRID - SCI PSC Meeting on Grid computing and Virtual organizations will be held on September 8 – 12, 2009 in Dubrovnik. The Meeting is organized by the Centre for Informatics and Computing from the Ruđer Bošković Institute. The aim of this PSC Meeting is to analyze the project results, present the results of the established infrastructure and developed applications as well as to introduce the participants with the work of Virtual organizations (VO) for meteorology, seismology and environmental protection.

At the recently held International Conference on the Applications of the Mössbauer Effect (ICAME 2009) in Vienna, Croatia was chosen to host the ICAM 2013 conference by secret ballot of 33 members of the International Board for the Applications of the Mössbauer Effect (IBAME). Croatia was nominated by the RBI scientists Svetozar Musić, PhD, Mira Ristić, PhD, and Stjepko Krehula, PhD, and chosen through a competitive process between Russia, Poland, Hungary and Brazil with the majority of 25 votes. The establishment in charge of the 2013 Conference will be the Ruđer Bošković Institute and the venue will be Opatija. Winning this nomination was yet another credit to the work of the Ruđer Bošković Institute.

RBI scientists Daniel Lyons, PhD, and Davorin Medaković, PhD, from the Centre for Marine Research in Rovinj, in cooperation with the scientists from Departments of Physics and Chemistry at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the University of Zagreb and the Croatian Conservation Institute, have recently published a new study on the Biomineralization on an Ancient Sculpture of the Apoxyomenos; Effects of a Metal-rich Environment on Crystal Growth in Living Organisms in the prestigious crystallographic scientific journal Crystal Growth & Design, a bi-monthly journal published by the American Chemical Society.

After passing the 100 days benchmark, RBI Director General Danica Ramljak, D.V.M, Ph.D., pushes on with a challenging task ahead of her: leading the Ruđer Bošković Institute on the path of progress from a national to the European centre of scientific excellence. The first step in doing so will be an independent evaluation of the Institute by international team of experts.

Ruđer Bošković Institute today welcomed the President of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Prof. Dr. Drs. h. c. Helmut Schwarz, professor of organic chemistry at Berlin University of Technology (TU) and a member of the RBI International Scientific Council who gave a lecture on: Ligand and Cluster-size Effects in Metal-mediated Activation of Methane: A Cold Approach to a Hot Problem. The lecture by professor Schwarz is the second of the Distinguished scientists at RBI series, organized under auspice of RBI Director.

The 3rd Adriatic Meeting on Computational Solutions in the Life Sciences will be held in the period of 1 - 5 September in Primosten, Šibenik. The Meeting is organized by the RBI scientists, gathered in the Centre for Computational Solutions in the Life Sciences at RBI- Sanja Tomić, PhD, David Smith, PhD, Darko Babić, PhD, Nađa Došlić, PhD, and Kristian Vlahovičeka, PhD, and supported by the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sports, European Science Foundation and Croatian Academy of Science and Art. The main goal of the meeting is to help scientists from South Eastern Europe interested in the computational treatment of biological systems to learn about the latest advances in the field and to exchange ideas.

The Group of Eight offers eight annual fellowships to early career researchers in Europe to work in Go8 universities for up to six months. Each Fellowship is worth AUD 20,000. The Fellowships are open to eligible researchers in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia.

Ruđer Bošković Institute is proud to welcome an outstanding world scientists and one of the world's leading chemists Prof. Dr. Drs. h. c. Helmut Schwarz, the President of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and professor of organic chemistry at Berlin University of Technology (TU). Professor Schwarz will be visiting the Institute on Monday, 31 August 2009.

Foreign researchers have been showing an increasing interest to work in Croatia reported Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sports (MZOS). This Ministry has recently started an initiative which allows foreign researchers to work at Universities, as well as public and private institutes and companies in Croatia, without the obligation to hold a work permit, pursuant to the Code of Procedures for the Approval of Temporary Stay. ''Since October last year 11 foreign researchers have been employed by the University of Zagreb, the Ruđer Bošković Institute and the University of Rijeka," said Mr. Hrvoje Meštrić, PhD, Director of the Directorate for Science at the MZOS.