This award provides funding for the Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation 2011 Grantees Conference. The conference will be held in Atlanta, Georgia, and the theme will be "Engineering Challenges to Energy Management and Sustainability." This conference will provide a venue for all Division grantees to meet their program officers and to report on their progress by presenting posters. It will also feature plenary and parallel session that help investigators better perform their research.
This conference has evolved into a major event, with over 1,000 attendees. It provides an opportunity for the Division's program officers to meet essentially all of their grantees, and it provides a venue for interaction between grantees. The conference also includes several events, such as a proposal writing workshop for young faculty and parallel session on topics such as ethics, to better prepare faculty for their careers. Student participation is a key feature of the conference, with attendance by over 200 students who also present posters featuring their work.
The objective of this grant was to provide support for organizing and hosting the January 4-7, 2011, National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering and Research Innovation Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. The PI worked with personnel in the NSF’s Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI) Division, along with personnel from ESI -- the company selected by NSF to handle conference registration, logistics, and the conference website -- in selecting the conference venue, developing the technical program for the conference – including selecting keynote and banquet speakers and organizing several of the parallel sessions – as well as organizing technical tours and a faculty/student mixer for conference attendees. The conference brought together over 1,300 academic and industry researchers – recipients of grants from the CMMI Division of NSF – to present and discuss their latest research findings in a wide range of topics within the purview of the CMMI Division. Included in the group of conference participants were 203 graduate students who were selected by the host university (Georgia Tech) to be awarded Student Participation Grants, which enabled them to attend the conference and present a poster on their research. The conference featured numerous keynote presentations, parallel sessions, panel discussions, and poster sessions on numerous topics focusing on the conference theme, "Engineering for Sustainability and Prosperity". Georgia Tech also organized and ran the conference’s K-12 Outreach Program, which featured a variety of research exhibits and demonstrations, 10 high school teams showcasing their research based on the conference theme, and a visit to the conference exhibits by 300 middle school students from Atlanta area schools. In summary, the 2011 NSF Engineering Research and Innovation Conference contributed in a significant way to the disciplines represented by the CMMI Division of NSF by raising awareness amongst researchers and conference attendees of significant technical challenges that need to be overcome in order to address the grand challenges facing our society in the areas of energy, environment and sustainability. It also helped raise awareness of science and engineering among K-12 students who participated in the outreach portion of the conference.
