Twenty-two meetings over forty-four years, from a small gathering on the shore of Lake Ontario to the standing biennial forum of the (Q)SAR community.
The workshop was first held in 1983 in Hamilton, Ontario, convened by Klaus L. E. Kaiser, and has since grown into a biennial forum for the theory and application of structure–activity relationships across the environmental and health sciences.
Its scope widened as it went on. The early meetings were rooted in aquatic toxicology; within a decade the programme had taken in atmospheric and terrestrial species, and then human health. The name of the series followed: the proceedings of the first meetings appeared under QSAR in Environmental Toxicology, the seventh under QSAR in Environmental Sciences, and the workshop is known today as the International Workshop on Quantitative Structure–Activity Relationships in Environmental and Health Sciences.
The way the science was published changed too. The first three meetings produced edited volumes; from Eindhoven in 1990 onwards the proceedings have appeared as journal special issues, most often in SAR and QSAR in Environmental Research, and more recently also in Computational Toxicology and Chemical Research in Toxicology.
The meeting has alternated between Europe and North America throughout, and has met in eleven countries. Only once has it missed its slot: the nineteenth workshop, planned for 2020, was postponed and held online in June 2021.
The meetings
1980s
1st1983Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Organised by Dr K. L. E. Kaiser
- Proceedings — K. L. E. Kaiser (Ed.), QSAR in Environmental Toxicology. D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1984, 406 pp.
2nd1986Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Organised by Dr K. L. E. Kaiser
- Proceedings — K. L. E. Kaiser (Ed.), QSAR in Environmental Toxicology — II. D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1987, 465 pp.
3rd1988Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
Organised by Dr T. W. Schultz
- Proceedings — J. E. Turner, M. W. England, T. W. Schultz and N. J. Kwaak (Eds.), Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Quantitative Structure–Activity Relationships (QSAR) in Environmental Toxicology [CONF-880520]. National Technical Information Service, Springfield, Virginia, 1988, 228 pp.
1990s
4th1990Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Organised by Dr J. Hermens
- Special issue — Science of the Total Environment, volumes 109–110.
5th1992Duluth, Minnesota, USA
Organised by Dr G. Veith
6th1994Belgirate, Italy
Organised by Dr W. Karcher
7th1996Elsinore, Denmark
Organised by Dr F. Chen
- Proceedings — F. Chen and G. Schüürmann (Eds.), Quantitative Structure–Activity Relationships (QSAR) in Environmental Sciences — VII. SETAC Press, Pensacola, Florida, 1997, 470 pp.
8th1998Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Organised by Dr J. Walker
2000s
9th2000Bourgas, Bulgaria
Organised by Dr O. Mekenyan
10th2002Ottawa, Canada
Organised by Dr R. Breton
11th2004Liverpool, England
Organised by Dr J. C. Dearden and Dr M. T. D. Cronin, Liverpool John Moores University
12th2006Lyon, France8–12 May 2006
Organised by Dr J. Devillers and Dr A. Capry
- Special issue — SAR and QSAR in Environmental Research, volume 18, issue 1–2.
13th2008Syracuse, New York, USA
Organised by Dr P. Howard and Dr J. Tunkel
- Special issue — SAR and QSAR in Environmental Research, volume 19, issue 7–8.
2010s
14th2010Montréal, Canada
Organised by Dr K. Krishnan, Université de Montréal
15th2012Tallinn, Estonia18–22 June 2012
Organised by Dr Uko Maran, University of Tartu
- Special issues — SAR and QSAR in Environmental Research, volume 24 (2013), issues 4, 5 and 6.
- Editorial — doi:10.1080/1062936X.2013.792493
16th2014Milan, Italy16–20 June 2014
Organised by Dr Emilio Benfenati, Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche “Mario Negri”
17th2016Miami, Florida, USA13–17 June 2016
Organised by Dr Glenn Myatt, Leadscope
18th2018Bled, Slovenia11–15 June 2018
Organised by Dr Marjana Novič and Dr Marjan Vračko, National Institute of Chemistry, Ljubljana
2020s
19th2021Online7–9 June 2021
Organised by Dr Grace Patlewicz, US Environmental Protection Agency
Planned for 2020 and postponed by a year; held as the first fully virtual edition of the series.
- Special issue — Computational Toxicology, virtual special issue.
- Editorial — doi:10.1016/j.comtox.2022.100221
20th2023Copenhagen, Denmark5–9 June 2023
Organised by Dr Eva Bay Wedebye, National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark
No dedicated special issue. Contributions appeared as they were accepted in volume 34 of SAR and QSAR in Environmental Research, for example doi:10.1080/1062936X.2023.2244410 and doi:10.1080/1062936X.2023.2253150.
21st2025Milan, Italy3–6 June 2025
Organised by Dr Alessandra Roncaglioni, Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche “Mario Negri”
- Special issue — Chemical Research in Toxicology, invitation at doi:10.1021/acs.chemrestox.5c00293
22nd2027Munich, Germany1–4 June 2027Upcoming
Hosted at the Helmholtz Munich Conference Centre, organised by Dr. Igor Tetko, coordinator of the "AiChemist" MSCA-DN, Helmholtz Munich.
Further reading
Two review articles cover the origins of the series in more depth than this page can.
- Evolution of the international workshops on quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSARs) in environmental toxicologyK. L. E. Kaiser, SAR and QSAR in Environmental Research 18 (2007) 3–20
- International Workshops on QSARs in the Environmental Sciences — the first 20 yearsJ. D. Walker, QSAR & Combinatorial Science 22 (2003) 415–421
Records for the first fourteen workshops are taken from the history page compiled for QSAR 2012 in Tallinn; later entries have been added by successive organisers. Corrections and missing details are welcome — please write to the organising committee at info(at)qsar.eu.