Polytechnic University of Tirane, Albania
The IUCr-UNESCO Bruker OpenLab Albania, held at Tirana (Albania) May 30 – June 3, 2016, represented a fundamental step in the process for the establishment of the Association of Albanian Crystallographers (AAC) which has now formally been founded and includes crystallographers from both Albania and Kosovo. The OpenLab followed the success of events organized in Albania during IYCr2014, namely the International Conference “New Frontiers of Nanomaterial Technologies for Applications in Biology and Medicine” and the 1st Workshop on Crystallography, held in conjunction with the 20th Congress of the Carpathian-Balkan Geological Association. At that time, the local community of crystallographers, with Dritan Siliqi (IC-CNR, Italy) and Michele Zema (IUCr, UK) as facilitators, formed the OPAL (Organization for the Promotion of Crystallography in Albania) working group, which was then extended thanks to the participation of crystallographers from Kosovo, and finally converged into the AAC.
The AAC is now a national member of the ECA and member of the IUCr.
The first President of AAC was Dr. Dritan Siliqi. He lead the AAC until February 2020 and for the merits he is appointed the Honorific President of AAC.
Currently the AAC is headed by Bujar Dida as Chair and Altin Mele as Co-chairmen for Albania and Fisnik Aliaj as Co-chairmen for Kosovo
The AAC give thanks to AIC (present and former presidents), IUCr (Michele Zema) , ECA (Alessia Bacchi) and specially IC-CNR, Bari (Michele Saviano) for the help for all the activities held in Albania during the past years.