With a record number of attendees at this years meeting and an interesting program of talks everyone agreed that the 2012 European Users Meeting was the best yet.  For three days Europe stretched from Australia to Brasil with Users from LaTrobe and Petrobras putting in the greatest number of airmiles to attend the meeting.

Prof Cumpson, Newcastle University, laid down the gauntlet early in the meeting for the 'oldest' XPS results detailing early surface analysis studies of the standard kilogram whilst he was at NPL.  This was trumped by Dr Johansson, Alto University, who presented results from cellulose pointing out that these self assembling metamaterials had evolved over a few hundred million years!  Not to be outdone Dr Bovet, Copenhagen University, presented 'Calcite, Chalk and Coccoliths...A 65 Million Year Story'.

Other talks at the meeting ranged from 'The effect of CeO₂ nanoparticle distribution on the chemical and structural evolution of CeO_2-SiO₂ systems' to 'Phenomena at the interface of bone graft substitute materials in cell culture medium'.  So there really was something for everyone during the meeting.

The social side of the meeting was also well received with traditional fish and chips on the Monday night and 'Dinner with the Dinosaurs' at Manchester University Museum on Tuesday night.

In a slight change to previous meetings we hosted workshops in parallel sessions on the Monday morning and Wednesday afternoon.  Numbers were limited for the two practical sessions and were quickly fully booked.

For those not able to attend the meeting both User and Kratos presentations are available from the download area of the Members section of the site and pictures in the "Picture Gallery" section.  If you are a Kratos User and do not yet have a login and password please complete the application using the menu option on the left hand side.