This project supports partial travel for 40 U.S. students and early career engineers/faculty to the 5th Thermal and Fluids Engineering Conference (TFEC) organized by the American Society of Thermal and Fluids Engineers (ASTFE). In addition, the funding will facilitate participation of 10 invited speakers and panelists who would otherwise be unlikely to attend the conference. The Thermal and Fluids Engineering Conference (TFEC) is an annual conference since 2015 that has grown to become a leading platform for presentation and discussion of research advances in thermal and fluids engineering. In 2020, the conference will take place April 5-8, 2020 in New Orleans, LA. The annual TFEC conference addresses the need for a platform for dissemination and discussion of research results in the fields of heat transfer and fluid mechanics. A number of sessions encompassing the breadth of thermal and fluid transport are currently being organized for the conference. The proposed NSF support will enable a significant intellectual benefit and professional development opportunity for a number of students and early career engineers/faculty from around the country. The participation of invited speakers and panelists enabled by the support will enhance and broaden the technical content of the conference, thereby benefiting all attendees. It is expected that this travel grant will focus research collaborations in multiple areas related to heat transfer and fluids engineering. The in-person platform offered by the conference is expected to lead to interesting and fruitful technical conversations. It is expected that this will lead to novel, collaborative approaches for addressing fundamental and applied problems in thermal and fluids engineering.
Thermal and fluids engineering effects a very broad spectrum of the industry and life in general. Advances in this field enabled by the conference may help improve and optimize a large number of applications that benefit the entire society in general. Some examples of applications to be discussed at TFEC include wind turbines, fuel cells, industrial processes, biomedicine, etc. Full papers and extended abstracts for TFEC are published by Begell House in the form of a conference proceeding. This set of papers are compiled and made available on the Begell House website. This will result in broad dissemination of research results presented at the conference. Given that the conference is being held in New Orleans, keynote presentations and other activities will be organized to introduce the audience to local issues of relevance to thermal/fluids engineering, such as water management of river, flood, and hurricane-induced wave interactions between ocean, bayous, canals, lakes, and waterways. Furthermore, the thermal-fluid science and engineering community will be introduced to the success stories of various local entrepreneurial efforts in bio-science/engineering in New Orleans area. By striving to ensure significant representation of minorities and women among the travel grant beneficiaries, the conference organizers will ensure that minorities and women specifically benefit from the conference. Specific efforts will be made to publicize the travel grant opportunity among women and persons from traditionally under-represented groups and increase their participation in the conference.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
