10th International Conference of the European Chitin Society

Vernal temperatures welcomed this year’s participants of the EUCHIS in Saint Petersburg. Caterina Kästner, head of marketing and sales and Torsten Richter, head of QA/QC represented the Heppe Medical Chitosan GmbH at the conference.

The Russian Chitin Society organised the international meeting of the EUCHIS from May 20-24, 2011. Approximately 150 representatives from Academia, R & D and Industry came to Saint Petersburg to discuss latest findings and interesting new approaches and projects for possible applications of chitin, chitosan and its derivatives.

The Sundays’ plenary session was held by Torsten Richter from HMC+. He presented the results of the standardisation project. In following discussions everybody agreed on the need of consistent methods to characterise chitosan. Nevertheless, the question what analysis techniques would be the best for the different parameters, remains.

The conference was a good occasion to have the general meeting as well as the board meeting of the European Chitin Society. President Prof. Sevda Senel was confirmed for another 2 years in office.

In addition to research results, participants were given an insight into Russian culture. The Sundays’ agenda also included an excursion to the Russian Tsar Court. The park of the Peterhof Palace was explored. Afterwards, the guests enjoyed Russian folklore and customary culinary delicacies during a boat trip on the Neva river.

Prof. Varlamov and his team organised a great event. Certainly at the next meeting of the chitosan family new and enlightening ideas will be discussed. We are looking forward to it.