This proposal is to host a conference on Microscale and Nanoscale transport in Edmonton, Canada. The budget is to support the travel of keynote speakers, new faculty, post docs and graduate students. Microscale and Nanoscale transport represent areas that are expected to transform in a fundamental way many applications for which the current solutions are either non-existent or are too expensive. Examples include electronic cooling, micro reactors, heat exchangers etc.
The planned conference provides a unique forum for interdisciplinary researchers to exchange ideas and come up with novel techniques. The previous meetings have resulted in a number of NSF supported research themes, and have developed a large number of young researchers to participate in this exciting new technology frontier.
The NSF grant will support bringing a number of prominent as well as emerging researchers to this conference, and will provide exciting new ideas that are expected to culminate into further advancements in this field.
The Ninth International Conference on Nanochannels, Microchannels and Minichannels was hosted under ASME sponsorship and NSF support for invited speakers and graduate students. The conference was attended by 200 participants. A total of 174 papers were presented. Participants from 26 countries were represented, with the largest group being from the US. Fabian Pease from Stanford University, David Tuckerman and Dongqing Li were the plenary speakers. They are the pioneers in this field. One of the highlights of the NSF participants was the student presentations of their conference papers. These students were chosen after reviewing their applications and recommendations. Another highlight was a special panel session in which leading experts provided their viewpoints and a very interactive session was held with the NSF grant support. We are currently working with the Journal of Heat Transfer to present a review paper. The conference provided an opportunity to the young researchers in the field of micro- and nano-scale transport an opportunity to hear about the latest development in this field by international researchers. The conference helped in dientifying emerging areas of research as well as future research needs. The conference is ninth in the series of the conferences hosted by ASME. In 2012, the conference will be hosted by the ASME Fluids Engineering Division and ASME Heat Transfer Division. The conference venue is Puerto Rico.
