Group Travel: Workshop on "Interfacial Phenomena and Advanced Materials", to be held in Gdansk, Poland on June 4-6, 2008
This project provides travel support for U.S. participants to attend a 3 day Workshop on "Interfacial Phenomena and Advanced Materials", to be held in Gdansk, Poland on June 4-6, 2008. The purpose of the Workshop is to encourage closer scientific contacts and long term research collaboration between researchers in this area between the U.S. and Poland. The Workshop will involve 15 U.S. participants and approximately 15 from Poland, with a balance between junior, mid-career and senior researchers, and between experiment and theory, with similar or complementary interests on the two sides. In addition, young researchers in these areas from Poland will attend the meeting, present poster papers, and interact with the more senior participants throughout the meeting. Approximately three of the USA participants will be provided additional travel funds to visit a Polish workshop participant in Poland in order to develop the collaborative research projects they will initiate at the workshop.
Intellectual merit. The topic of the Workshop will represent cutting edge research in the areas of soft and hard materials, bio-materials, polymers, self-assembled materials, complex fluids, surface science, colloids, adsorption, catalysis, and computational nanoscience. The participants are leading researchers in these areas, and the objective is to provide a survey of current research in these areas and to explore fruitful future possibilities for research collaboration.
Broader impact. The international workshop is expected to initiate individual and institutional collaboration among the participants. A previous workshop on "Nanoscience and Nano-Structured Materials" held in Poznan, Poland in June 2006 proved highly successful and led to numerous research contacts and collaborations between U.S. and Polish participants, and it is anticipated that this workshop will be equally successful in this regard. The participation of a substantial number of young Polish researchers at the Workshop will offer the U.S. participants a much broader view of research in this area in Poland, and it is expected that this may lead to future visits to U.S. laboratories by some of these young workers. U.S. participants will visit other institutions in Poland after the Workshop, to learn more about research activities and to explore further possibilities for research cooperation between the two countries. Such research cooperation will enrich the research and education infrastructure of both countries.
