A Collaborative Alliance

The American Chemical Society has entered into a broad strategic alliance with the London-based Society of Chemical Industry (SCI). The alliance will give members of each society access to one another's meetings and facilities. The societies will also cosponsor meetings.

"This alliance is a really great inaugural example of how ACS can extend its global reach through collaboration with other scientific societies," ACS Executive Director and CEO Madeleine Jacobs says. "We feel very good about collaborating with a premier organization like SCI and the doors that it will open."

The ACS Committee on Corporation Associates already partners with SCI through the Global Innovation Imperatives (Gii) program, which sponsors conferences to bring chemistry solutions to bear on the world's sustainability issues.

Under the three-year term of the new alliance, ACS and SCI will cosponsor meetings on broad topics of mutual concern. In addition, ACS will extend ACS-member registration rates for some meetings, possibly including ACS national meetings. SCI will extend its member registration rates to ACS members for conferences, including its May 2010 global summit meeting in Barcelona.

ACS and SCI will also provide each other reduced rates for use of conference rooms and offices at their facilities worldwide. They are also each considering offering preferred nonmember rates to each other's members for other activities, short courses, and products.

These perks may benefit the more than 1,500 ACS members in the U.K. and 6,200 elsewhere in Europe, Jacobs notes, "not to mention all of our 154,000 members in general." SCI's 6,000 members—including its 750 U.S. members who are business leaders and members in 91 countries—will also benefit from the alliance.

Collaborating with "the most prominent organization of its type in the world to tackle issues of mutual concern is a privilege for us," SCI CEO Andrew Ladds says. By linking with a much larger organization, he adds, SCI will be able to operate "on a far broader platform than ever before—something that is very exciting."