The first virtual edition of The International Diffuse Reflectance Conference (IDRC)

My immediate reaction when it was decided to hold the International Diffuse Reflectance Conference (IDRC) online was to work on bringing the key elements that made the conference renowned and appealing to students and professionals. The close contact with great contributors of spectroscopy, chemometrics, and many other fields was replaced by a conference call, a reality that is currently part of our lives. However, after posting the announcement with the draft program, I realized that the IDRC is more than a conference with a community willing to support and make possible an event of the highest quality. In 2012, as a second-year graduate student, during my first IDRC, I realized how accessible and truly curious a scientist could remain even after pioneering applications, inventions, and discoveries. The diffuse reflectance conference was far from the typical technical sessions where the interaction is usually restricted by the 10-min-long question and answers period. Questions about my poster came directly from the scientific community, whom I read about just a few months ago. About 10 years later, as a conference chair, my goal was to ensure that this moment and feeling of absorbing multivariate information from remarkable scientists and humans get transferred to the next generation.