This award provides funds for graduate-student travel stipends to the 12th International Congress on Combustion By-Products and Their Health Effects. The conference will be held in June, 2011, in China at the Jhejiang University in Hangzhou. This is the 12th conference, and approximately 150 researchers are expected to participate. The NSF Combustion and Plasma Systems program has provided support for four previous gatherings of this conference. Travel expenses will be provided for five to ten students.
Research, and especially environmental research, is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary. This meeting is especially designed to bring together engineers, scientists, and health effects researchers to discuss the environmental issues surrounding combustion. Our next generation of researchers must be familiar with these interdisciplinary issues to be successful. By encouraging the participation of students with partial travel support, we are developing and training the next generation of researchers.
Funds were provided for three students at U.S. universities to attend the 12th International Congress on Combustion By-Products and Their Health Effects in June 2011 at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China. The students delivered oral presentations and participated in research discussions. They had the opportunity to interact with reknowned scientists from China, the US and other parts of the world. This was an opportunity for them to network and understand scientific research outside their own laboratories. Students attended plenary, oral, and poster sessions. Talks were given by biomedical researchers, combustion engineers, chemists, physicists, environmental scientists and engineers, policy makers, and representatives from many other disciplines.. Other stakeholders from the public, industry, and govrnment were in attendance. As a consequence, the students were provided with abroad scientific perspective. Beacause the congress was in China with other international attendees, they also experienced diverse cultures. Through extensive interaction with the Chinese and other foreighn students, the could identify some of the differences in our educational schemes. The conference allowed students to meet with academiic, industrial, and goverment workers. This experience provided job opportunities and networking which could last for many years. Hopefully, this experience inspired the students to work hard to succed in their research and careers.
