The first of the BioXFEL Science and Technology Center's planned annual international conferences was hosted in the UK at two back to back meetings at the Royal Society in London and at Chicheley Hall, a county conference center owned by the Royal Society in Buckinghamshire.

The first of the BioXFEL Science and Technology Center's planned annual international conferences was hosted in the UK at two back to back meetings at the Royal Society in London and at Chicheley Hall, a county conference center owned by the Royal Society in Buckinghamshire. Both meetings were organized by John Spence (Arizona State University and Scientific Director of the BioXFEL Center) and Henry Chapman (Center for Free-Electron Science in Hamburg, Germany). The first, at the Royal Society, attracted over 180 attendees representing the world wide effort to develop biological applications of X-ray lasers. There was a strong diversity in representation of senior investigators, junior investigators, and a new generation of students representing the USA, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. BioXFEL Center members comprised 10% of the attendees and gave many of the invited talks.

The second meeting at Chicheley Hall attracted nearly 100 attendees with the same mixture of career stages and countries. Both meetings were full and there was significant discussion over posters, during lunch, and dinner breaks with much of the discussion extending late into the evening. Both meetings were an exciting mixture of what has been accomplished to date, the potential capabilities in the future, and new methods enabled by X-ray lasers that are theoretically possible, but will take significant developments to make practical. The second meeting described many of the those difficulties that lay ahead. Many of the talks were captured and can be viewed here.

Combined, both meetings served as a perfect forum to initiate the BioXFEL Center efforts with many members present. Papers will be published in a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and dedicated to the memory of Dame Louise Johnson, a pioneer in structural biology and early supporter of the use of X-ray free electron lasers in the field.