This is a grant for participant support of leading scholars and excellent young scientists from the USA to attend the Gordon Research Conference on Industrial Ecology (GRC-IE). The conference will be held in Lucca (Barga), Italy, June 1-6, 2014. The conference will focus on the science informing the transformation of the industrial metabolism towards sustainability. The concept of industrial metabolism refers to the flows of energy and materials that constitute the physical basis of modern societies: the use of raw materials, their conversion into manufactured capital, goods and services, and their subsequent release to the environment as wastes and emissions. This is a topic of increasing policy importance, as multiple challenges including climate mitigation & adaptation, motivate a stronger focus towards transforming the industrial metabolism. Special emphasis will be given to new modeling techniques and scenario-based analysis. Invited speakers will present the research frontiers in spearheading this topic.
The Gordon Research Conference on INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY was held at Renaissance Tuscany Il Ciocco Resort, Lucca (Barga), Italy, June 1-6th. The Conference was well-attended with 120 participants (attendees list attached). The attendees represented the spectrum of endeavor in this field coming from academia, industry, and government laboratories, both U.S. and foreign scientists, senior researchers, young investigators, and students. Of the 120 attendees, 33 voluntarily responded to a general inquiry regarding ethnicity which appears on our registration forms. Of the 33 respondents, 9% were Minorities – 3% Hispanic, 3% Asian and 3% African American. Approximately 41% of the participants at the 2014 meeting were women. In designing the formal speakers program, emphasis was placed on current unpublished research and discussion of the future target areas in this field. There was a conscious effort to stimulate lively discussion about the key issues in the field today. Time for formal presentations was limited in the interest of group discussions. In order that more scientists could communicate their most recent results, poster presentation time was scheduled. Attached is a copy of the formal schedule and speaker program and the poster program. In addition to these formal interactions, "free time" was scheduled to allow informal discussions. Such discussions are fostering new collaborations and joint efforts in the field.
