This award supports graduate student participation in the 22nd International Symposium on Gas Kinetics (June 18-22, 2012; www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/events/GK2012/). The biennial, week-long meeting on the University of Colorado campus in Boulder, CO includes the chemistry research themes: Alternative Fuels and Renewable Energy, Combustion Chemistry, Atmospheric Chemistry, Multi-phase Chemical Processes, Heterogeneous Chemical Processes, Fundamentals of Chemical Reactivity (Theory), Experimental Methods and Applications, and Ions and Chemical Processes. The symposium consists of distinguished invited speakers as well as contributed oral and poster presentations. Enrollment for the symposium is approximately 200 delegates. The broader impacts of the symposium derive from offering an opportunity for young scientists to meet, network, and exchange ideas with leaders in atmospheric chemistry as well as other leading fields in chemistry. Graduate students are encouraged to present the results of their own research at this meeting. Students (U.S. citizens) from underrepresented groups in the field will be targeted for receiving support.
The intellectual merit of the International Symposium on Gas Kinetics has been the presentation of new scientific results and advances by scientists from all over the world working in a variety of fields. The symposium is held biennially under the oversight of the Royal Society of Chemistry, while GC2012 was the first symposium to be held in the USA. The project supported US graduate students with a very broad geographical distribution to participate in this scientific exchange with senior scientists in the field of atmospheric and combustion chemistry. The group of graduate students included under-represented groups which included six women out of thirteen participants. The broader impact of this symposium has been to encourage young scientists- the emerging new researchers- to attend and present their research, ensuring the vitality of the field.
