During the last 50 years the importance and scope of solid state chemistry has grown in response to the continuing challenge to understand, control, and predict the structures and properties of solids at the atomic level and to synthesize new compounds with enhanced physical response. The many successes in the preparation of materials with unique electronic, optical, magnetic, and catalytic properties are a clear testament to the vitality and importance of solid state chemistry to materials research. Today, researchers in this field can be found in numerous relevant areas including Materials Science and Engineering, Ceramics, Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Mineralogy/Geology, and Condensed Matter Physics. The inherently multidisciplinary nature of solid state chemistry provides the intellectual basis for its continuing vitality.

This conference will continue the precedent of bringing together researchers from diverse backgrounds, studying a variety of materials types, to discuss the latest advances and challenges in solid state chemistry. In the spirit of the GRC concept, the intent of this meeting is to promote the exchange of ideas and the building of strong relationships among industrial, academic, and government researchers working on the frontiers of the field. Speakers and poster presenters are explicitly encouraged to emphasize advances, unpublished work, new ideas, and speculations for the future on a variety of current topics. Active contribution to discussions is expected and participation in poster sessions, which offer an excellent opportunity for presenting new and exciting research, is strongly encouraged.

Although the 2006 meeting will feature oral and poster presentations on a variety of current topics, one theme that will receive some emphasis is the determination and understanding of the structures of solids at the local level - below the length-scale of the average unit cell revealed by routine diffraction methods and traditional structure solution methods. This problem broadly impacts solid state chemistry research, cutting across material type (from ionic compounds to covalent intermetallics, from crystalline to semi- or disordered solids) and scale (from nano to bulk to single crystals). Today, more and more useful materials are complex, not "perfectly crystalline", and exhibit exploitable properties that are markedly dependent on structural details at the local level.