As a part of the conference an open discussion meeting was arranged on 29th November at 2 pm in the Faculty Hall of the IISc. This was attended by a large number of participants. Vijay Kumar along with Kanhere and Kawazoe conducted the meeting.

Firstly Vijay Kumar stated the purpose of the meeting and invited one representative from each of the countries to contribute to the ideas and discussions. Following countries (areas) were represented: Prof. Ahmed (Bangladesh), Prof. Wang (China), Dr. Zhou (Hong Kong), Prof. Mookerjee (India), Prof. Esfarjani (Iran), Prof. Ohno (Japan), Prof. Philpott (Singapore), Dr. Srichaikul (Thailand), Dr. Nguyen-Manh (Vietnam/UK), Dr. Cong (Vietnam), and Prof. Andersen (Europe/Psi_k). In all there were 79 participants from Asian region and 6 from the rest of the world.

Here is a concise summary of the various views expressed.
 

1. There was unanimous agreement that Computational Materials Science is rapidly emerging as a powerful method to understand materials behavior and for designing novel materials with desired properties. Asian countries have strong groups in electronic structure calculations and other simulation techniques as well as are reputed in software technology development. This must be consolidated to achieve faster progress in Asian region.
2. There is a wide spectrum of expertise, size and nature of the groups, the computational resources available and the support in terms of funding in various Asian countries. On one hand there are large groups with state of the art computational facilities and on the other side there are others with almost a PC and one or two researchers.
3. This means that the role of the ASIAN CONSORTIUM becomes all the more crucial and it has to shoulder a lot more responsibility by undertaking several activities to realize the objectives stated.
4. Toward this end several concrete suggestions have been made.
1. Establishing a directory of all the groups with information about he expertise and interests, the facilities available, the resource and computer codes developed and available. Such a directory could be placed on a web site.
2. Such a directory would be useful for informal discussions and for establishing contacts and collaborative programs.
3. Starting e-discussion forum -- Asian e-group for CMS (Computational Materials Science)
4. Establishing Asian preprint archive.
5. Establishing a depository of available codes along with the nature of the support available and the type of licenses for the same.
6. Starting of a newsletter about ACCMS and other related activities.
7. Bilateral collaborations, applying for joint funding wherever possible. Several countries may have such agreements, which could be exploited.
5. There was no definite opinion about the frequency of such a conference, which could be once or twice a year. It was felt that at least at national level it should be once a year. A notable point was made (which is relevant and especially so for advanced countries) that there should be compelling reasons for attending this conference if it is to be every year. This simply means that the conference should achieve the status where important results are presented and gets "not to be missed" status.
6. An important point was made about the time scheduling. More time should be given to posters as well as for discussions. By possibly reducing the number of invited talks.
7. The organization and functioning of ACCMS could be more democratized.