2–4 October 2006, Nemi, Italy
The first edition of the bi-annual CMA4CH Meeting took place in Nemi, a small town situated near Rome, from 2 to 4 October 2006. The organisation of the meeting was co-ordinated by Dr Giovanni Visco (from Rome University). Although labelled as Mediterranean, in this edition the 40 active participants came from eight different countries, not only from Europe. The meeting was patronised by several organisations engaged in the environmental and conservation fields. Unfortunately, in the first edition there was a lack of sponsorship! As we expected, contributions from Italian scientists were predominant, about 2/3. Taking into account the co-authors of the presenters, 119 researchers were involved in the Conference.
The conference started with a plenary lecture by Dr Nazzareno Gabrielli, already director of the Vatican Museum, who emphasised the importance of a diagnostic step “before” any interventions on cultural finds in order to obtain an useful data, considering not only the nature of the object but also the surrounding indoor or outdoor environment. All the other presentations focussed on the “multivariate aspect of our world” and on the consequential need of a multivariate analysis both on the environment and cultural heritage. Many presentations showed the relative lack of the multivariate analysis application on famous and wide used analysis methods (by experts) in the two meeting main topics.
Many chemometrics methods are presented both in poster and oral presentations, PCA, PLS, HCA, LDA, GA, Expert Systems, all applied to real problems. Significant contributions to the research, in the three fields, where awarded by two other members of the commission not linked with the meeting Organisation. Three young researchers received an award, for poster or oral presentations; two were sponsored by the Italian Chemical Society, while the third by Camo software house. The "best presentation" award was sponsored by Camo too, giving a three year licence for Unscrambler. The winner is a colleague of the Military Air Force, Forecast Group, who presented climatic multivariate measures, obtained in situ by a field-instruments, in a chapel of a church. All the prizes were awarded during the social dinner carried out inside an ancient reused Roman cistern.
The poster and oral presentations, in a collaborative and not judging audience, gave an unique opportunity for young researchers to present their results on a equal footing with established scientist, using their names as first author. An attractive social programme for attendees and accompanying people included a visit to the Ship Museum where we could admire the remains of two ancient ships of the Roman age. The full programme of the 2006 edition, including photos of the meeting and list of presentations is available on the web site http://w3.uniroma1.it/cma4ch/06/index2.html, the programme gives an unique overview of the activities performed in the meeting. A Proceedings Book of the meeting, with ISBN, containing also a CD with most of the full text presentation slides, is already published and purchasable on request from the meeting web site.
22 works are submitted for a preliminary refereeing step in order to obtain publication in a prestigious international journal. The meeting is established to be a fixed biannual item concerning the multivariate methods and its application on Cultural Heritage and Environment and, of course, Theoretical Chemometrics.
Prof. Giovanni Visco Rome University