The Fourth International Conference on Electrophoretic Deposition: Fundamentals and Applications (EPD-2011) will be held October 2-7, 2011 in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. This international meeting will involve participants from various sectors of the research community including academia, industry, and federal government agencies. EPD 2011 offers a rich atmosphere for the presentation and exchange of ideas centered on the advancement of electrophoretic deposition (EPD) and its associated science and technology. This grant will help support the travel of young, emerging scientists and established eminent researchers from the United States to EPD-2011, during which explorations and discussions of materials fabrication, advanced techniques, and innovations using electrophoretic deposition will be conducted. The increased participation of scientists from the United States in this rapidly developing area of science and engineering is crucial to the dissemination of information about the field and the subsequent, eventual training of an internationally competitive workforce in the US. EPD 2011 follows from the success of the previous conferences of the series held in 2002, 2005 and 2008. These tri-annual Electrophoretic Deposition (EPD) conferences are a leading venue for experts from academia and industry working on EPD and its application as a processing technique for fabrication of both traditional and new (nano-) materials. EPD-2011 will tackle topics at the forefront of the field such as nanostructured materials, biomaterials, and solid oxide fuel cells.
EPD-2011 will result in the following broader impacts: I. The advancement of knowledge at the intersection of the fields of physics, electrokinetics, materials science, chemistry, and manufacturing. II. Providing a forum for young scholars to interact with seasoned research professionals. III. Developing international research partnerships that address technical challenges of EPD. IV. Introduce and develop new partnerships among groups of junior faculty, early career scientists, and more established, eminent scholars, particularly those from underrepresented groups, in this rapidly emerging area of science and engineering.
The Fourth International Conference on Electrophoretic Deposition: Fundamentals and Applications (EPD-2011) was held on October 2-7, 2011 in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. EPD 2011 followed from the success of the previous conferences of the series held in 2002, 2005 and 2008. These tri-annual Electrophoretic Deposition (EPD) conferences are a leading venue for experts from academia and industry working on EPD and its application as a processing technique for fabrication of both traditional and novel materials. This international meeting involved participants from various sectors of the electrophoretic deposition research community including academia, industry, and federal government agencies. EPD-2011 provided a rich atmosphere for the presentation and exchange of ideas centered on the advancement of electrophoretic deposition (EPD) and its associated science and technology. The generous support provided by CBET-1133640 helped support the conference registration and travel of three leading researchers within the United States EPD community, who provided invited talks in their respective fields at our convening. Supporting the increased participation of scientists from the United States in this rapidly developing area of science and engineering was a central tenet of this proposal and was critical to the dissemination of information about the field and the subsequent, eventual training of an internationally competitive workforce in the US. This award also helped support the logistics and activities of the conference, sponsoring two research poster sessions, several discussion breaks, and assisting the logistics associated with the Conference Proceedings and a specially arranged edition of the Journal of Physical Chemistry B, which features several participants from the Conference. The Conference had a total of 64 registered attendees, originating from 20 countries across the globe. Among the attendees were 13 scientists and engineers from US-based institution, including representatives each from academia, industry, and national laboratories. CBET-1133640 sponsored the Tuesday and Thursday evening poster sessions, which were held at the conference. The Poster Sessions was conducted in a reception hall that was separate from the primary lecture hall that housed the oral presentations. This reception hall also comprised space for refreshments that were served during the poster session. Public dissemination of the conference proceedings has occurred through a peer-reviewed volume of the journal Key Engineering Materials (Trans Tech Publications Ltd.; Figure 5; www.ttp.net/978-3-03785-379-5.html). The generous support provided by CBET-1133640 was acknowledged in the publication. For the Fourth International Conference, we were very successful in recruiting new participants to the meeting, with over thirty-three percent of the participants, including six of the participants from the United States, were brand new to the Conference series. Participation of women and underrepresented minorities has historically been low at the EPD conferences and the PI has worked extensively on this issue. Funding from NSF to support United States-based scholars will help to build a critical mass of domestic scientists in EPD concerned with the inclusion of underrepresented groups. The statistics EPD-2011 included six underrepresented minority attendees: two black attendees and four Hispanic/Hispanic American attendees, which we look forward to increasing for future conferences.
