and the latter served as the Conference Chair and Chair of the local organizing committee.
The conference setting was the main amphitheater of the GAIA Center of the Goulandris Natural History Museum in the Kifissia suburb of Athens. The hall provided a splendid 21st century venue for this meeting. The conferees were welcomed by Mrs. Niki Goulandris, cofounder and president of the Museum, whose motivational opening address set a tone of enthusiasm for the duration of the conference. Mrs. Goulandris, an internationally recognized artist, botanist, and environmentalist, reminded the conferees of the challenges faced by science and of the need to always move forward in anticipation of the future. In this context, she shared with the participants her vision in the founding of the museum and its mission within the scientific community and the Greek and Mediterranean culture. As she said, ''In the early 1960's, when the world did not yet suspect the damages to the environment which were lying in wait,'' Niki and her late husband Angelos Goulandris decided to ''create an institution whose mission was the protection of the country's precious natural resources and the creation in youth of a new code of values, based on the balanced coexistence of man and the natural environment.'' It is important to not lose touch with the fact that: ''As we [in analytical mass spectrometry] discover the microcosm of new molecules, we open new pages in history that reflect the beauty of nature whose evolution we need to preserve''.