This proposal is a request for a grant to travel to India to help plan and develop a workshop in Chandigarh, India. The planned US/India workshop is being considered with India that is facing issues in energy and pollution areas due its fast growing chemical industry and energy needs. In January of 2007, a trip was made to New Delhi, India and a contact was established with Dr. S. Basu, Professor of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology- Delhi who agreed to organize the Indian side of a similar workshop. The PI and Dr. Basu met Dr. A. Mitra, Director, India - US Science and Technology Forum, New Delhi who asked for a proposal to fund the Indian side. Though emails have been exchanged between Dr. Basu and the PI discussing various aspects of the workshop, there is a strong need to visit India and workout the details (discussed later) in a meeting between Dr. Mitra, Dr. Basu and PI of this proposal. This proposal is a request for a grant to travel to India to help develop the planned workshop.
Intellectual Merit: The workshop would cover a variety of topics relevant to fundamentals of transport, environment, and energy processes. These include interfacial processes, thermodynamics, mass transfer, separations, catalysis, combustion and particle mechanics, energy and environmental sustainability. Researchers in these areas will be invited who would have a strong interest in developing research collaborations.
Broader Impact: The major impact of this workshop would be to start an endeavor towards collaborative R&D effort between faculty members of the USA and India to undertake fundamental research that was started by the three recent workshops with China. This would help in achieving pollution prevention and control in industries involved in energy conversion and chemical production. For example, new joint discoveries in the field of carbon dioxide sequestration and fuel cells for vehicular transportation could limit global warming faced by both nations as well as the entire world. International collaboration and contacts with India and the USA will result in many beneficial effects to USA researchers participating in this planned international workshop-including joint research projects and exchange of students.
All government approved international travel expenses of the PI would be covered by this proposed grant.
