This is an International Travel grant that provides support for U.S. participants to attend a four day Conference on "Interfacial Phenomena at the Nanoscale: Fluids and Soft Matter," to be held in Poznan, Poland on June 19-23, 2012, at the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences. The proposed Conference is a follow-up to and builds upon three earlier and successful Polish/USA Conferences held in Poznan (2006), Gdansk (2008) and Krakow (2010). The purpose of the Conference 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 17 U.S. participants and 15-20 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. The conference travel award also provides funds to support follow-up visits to the US by Polish Researchers to promote research collaborations initiated through contacts made at the Conference.
Intellectual Merit:
The topic of the Conference will represent cutting edge research in the areas of soft and hard materials, bio-materials, polymers, polymerization, self assembly, complex fluids, microemulsions, surface science, interfacial phenomena, catalysis, colloids, adsorption, adhesion, rheology, computational nanoscience, and thin films. 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 Conference is expected to strengthen existing and initiate new individual and institutional collaboration among the participants. For example, we know that some US participants have ongoing collaboration (Professors Grzybowski, Gubbins, Matyjaszewski, and Radosz). These and other participants plan to visit other academic centers in Poland (for example, Krakow, Gdansk, Warszawa) to discuss future projects. Such projects will enrich the research and education infrastructure of both countries. The project budget includes funds for travel by young Polish researchers to the U.S. during the year following the conference to facilitate collaborations initiated at the conference. These funds will be available to graduate students and postdocs.
This project funded a workshop in the general area of soft materials and interfaces entitled: "Interfacial Phenomena at the Nanoscale: Fluids and Soft Matierials". The workshop took place in the city of Poznan in Poland in June 2012, and its aim was to foster collaboration between US and Polish scientists. This was the fourth workshop of exchange between US and Polish scientists, the other three were carried out in Poznan (2006), Gdansk (2008) and Krakov (2010). The workshop consisted of several plenary oral sessions and two poster sessions. The young researchers from Poland participated in the poster session as well as a special session dedicated to them. There were a total of 33 oral presentations and 49 posters, with 13 of the oral papers given by members of the US delegation. The US delegation included scientist from 10 different institution from accross the country. The organization of the workshop included time for informal exchanges between the scientist of the two countries. The workshop provided a forum for direct interactions between scientist from the two countries that fostered the possibility of international collaborations. The project also included visits of four young polish scientist to US laboratories that visited laboratories at the Department of Chemical Engineering at North Carolina State University,The National Cancer Institute at Fort Detrick in Frederic, MD, The Department of Condensed Matter Theory at the University of California at Los Angeles and The Department of Chemistry at City College of New York. The workshop strengthen existing and initiated new individual and institutional collaboration among the participants. These projects enrich the research and education infrastructure of both countries.
