The 34th meeting of the ICTP Scientific Council will take place on 5-6 May in the Centre’s Main Building. Jacob Palis, chairman of the Council and former director of the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics in Brazil, will preside. New members of the 12-person Council include Akito Arima, chairman of the Japan Science Foundation’s Science Museum; Jia’er Chen, former president of the National Natural Science Foundation of China; and Paul Crutzen (Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 1995), former director of the Atmospheric Chemistry Division at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany. The Council will review ICTP’s activities over the past and discuss the Centre’s future programmes and direction.