This grant is for partial support of young researchers (students, post-doctoral fellows, and junior faculty) from US institutions participating in the 21st International Symposium on Chemical Reaction Engineering (ISCRE 21). The symposium will take place in Philadelphia, PA, USA, June 13-16, 2010. The theme of the symposium is: 'Addressing resource sustainability, environmental and life science challenges'. Advisors will be asked to nominate students and postdoctoral researchers working in their research groups; the nomination package will include a letter of recommendation and the CV of the nominee. Junior faculty members will simply submit their CVs. The ISCRE 21 scientific committee will evaluate the applicants and select the candidates who will receive some partial support.
Intellectual Merit:
Meeting the world's demands for energy, food, water and medicine in a sustainable way, while protecting the environment, requires development of new technologies and advanced materials. The theme of this symposium is to capture the essential role that chemical reaction engineering (CRE) plays in addressing these challenges. ISCRE 21 will feature communications of recent research on CRE fundamentals, enabling technologies, and advanced materials such as catalysts, membranes, renewables and, solar and fuel cells. The International Symposiums on Chemical Reaction Engineering, held every two years, bring the international community of researchers specializing in catalysis and reaction engineering together and contributes to solving environmental, energy, chemical and pharmaceutical problems through reaction engineering innovations. ISCRE 21 will include plenary lectures on current topics, oral and poster presentations, and plenty of opportunity for individual discussions. The proceedings will be published as a special issue of Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research (IECR). Participation in this symposium will hopefully energize the young investigators, expose them to new innovations and help them synthesize new ideas, which are central to further developments in the above-mentioned industries.
Broader Impact:
The knowledge generated by the CRE community is central to the continuing success of various industries and the US economy. Over the past few years, there is the feeling that the CRE community has been shrinking, e.g., as evidenced by the rather small number of junior faculty. NSF support for up to 46 ICSRE participants will provide a great vehicle to increase attendance of young investigators including people from underrepresented groups and continue the CRE mission. For additional impact, ISCRE 21 will disseminate information through its web site and a dedicated IECR issue of accepted papers and plenary perspectives.
The PI received this grant to enable participation of young researchers in the 21st International Symposium on Chemical Reaction Engineering (ISCRE) which was held in Philadelphia in June 2010. The PI served as the chair of this conference. The PI advertised the availability of travel grants through multiple means: (a) ISCRE website; (b) emails to almost all chemical engineering departments in US universities. Candidates for travel grants submitted applications via the ISCRE website. The PI and the co-chairs of this conference selected 25 graduate students/post-doctoral fellows and 2 assistant professors from various chemical engineering departments and awarded travel grants to them. The symposium gave these young researchers an opportunity to learn about forefront research in Chemical Engineering applied to the 21st century challenges in energy, environment and advanced materials. The symposium included several plenary lectures, oral presentations and poster sessions. The symposium attracted over 300 participants: this included a substantial number of industrial researchers as well as researchers from foreign countries. All the travel grant recipients made either oral or poster presentation of their research results. Most of the papers presented in the symposium and all the plenary lectures were published in a special issue (Volume 49, issue 21 in the year 2010) of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Rseearch. The preface for this special issue, prepared by the PI and the co-chairs, provides additional details of the symposium.
