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The first edition of the ECA European Crystallography School (ECS1), to be held in Pavia (Italy) during the course of IYCr2014, has found good balance between two apparently diverging goals: (i) to help students and young researchers to find their way in modern science, while keeping a special focus on the molecular and crystalline structure to interpret properties and functionality of materials; (ii) to raise the social and academic awareness of the great advances that crystallography has allowed and will allow to many branches of sciences. Students may choose between two formulae, i.e. a 6-day course with lectures and hands-on sessions held by renowned scientists, covering the state-of-the-art of crystallographic methods, theories and applications, at the same time indicating their future perspectives and cutting-edge aspects, or a 10-day Erasmus Intensive Programme, including a 3-day preparatory course and granting 3 ECTS credits. IYCr2014 is a unique opportunity to stimulate and ignite widespread interest in crystallography; therefore, some frontier seminars will be open to University faculty members, students, and to the general public. Efforts will be made to create a nice and friendly environment, with the goal to provide chances for future collaborations. Students will be invited to bring a poster showing their research results, projects or scientific interests. This will allow students to discuss their ideas with experienced crystallographers and favour aggregation. The programme received good support from scientific institutions and vendors, and a great response from the students: more than 110 pre-registrations from 33 countries were already received at the time this abstract was prepared, showing that there is a real need for both fundamental and advanced teaching in crystallography. We hope that this format will be continued and improved so as to provide a stable, periodic rendezvous for students and researchers under the common theme of crystallography.

Much of our knowledge of the origin and differentiation of the terrestrial planets arises from the study of trace elements behaviour. Interpreting and modelling trace element data requires quantitative information on how elements partition between coexisting mineral and melt phases, which in turn requires understanding of the mechanisms of trace-element incorporation. This goal can be achieved combining various experimental (X-ray diffraction, spectroscopic methods, microbeam analysis) and computational techniques. This combined multidisciplinary approach allows integration of structural information at both short- and long-range scale, and provides greatly enhanced interpretative and modelling tools for geochemistry and, in general, for material sciences. In fact, a correct model of the incorporation and local environment of dopants is crucial to interpret many technological properties and to design innovative materials. A number of case studies (mainly based on electron microprobe analyses, singlecrystal and powder X-ray diffraction, XANES and EXAFS spectroscopy applied to natural and synthetic garnets) will be discussed. They mainly concern: i) changes in the local environment of cations along solid solutions; ii) multiple mechanisms of incorporation and partitioning of minor and trace elements in mineral structures with multiple sites with different coordination geometries.