A workshop will be held to identify emerging research areas in the field of ceramics, inclusive of glasses, composites, and oxide and non-oxide ceramics. The workshop will take place in March 2012, and it will involve 40 to 50 researchers representing a broad range institutions from the US and abroad. The workshop will identify the most exciting recent discoveries in the field and determine whether or not they represent important areas for future research investments and, if so, why. The most promising research areas will be prioritized. In addition to evaluating trends in research, strategies to sustain and promote leadership in the field of ceramics will be examined. The outcome of the workshop will be a report that will be peer-reviewed and published in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society as a feature article.
TECHNICAL DETAILS: The workshop will be organized by materials type, and there will be separate committees on oxide ceramics, non-oxides, glasses, and composites. Cutting across these topical areas, attention will be given to methods to accelerate discovery and deployment of materials. The workshop will convene for two and one-half days. One and one-half days will be devoted to the identification, evaluation, and prioritization of emerging research in each of four topical areas: oxides, non-oxides, glasses, and composites. During the next half day, the workshop will divide into two groups to separately consider the international context and funding mechanisms. At the end of the second day, the chairs of the international and funding committees will present draft reports. In the final half day, the group will break into the four topical subcommittees and will draft sections of the report. In the final session, the entire group will reconvene and each of the four subcommittees will present their drafts. During the afternoon of the third day, the PI begin the process of merging the subcommittee reports.
A group of about 35 ceramic scientists met in Arlington, VA, from March 19th to the 21st, 2012, to identify the most important scientific challenges for the ceramics community. The participants represented a broad cross section of ceramics researchers from academia, government, and industry. Prior to the meeting, the group exchanged ideas about scientific challenges using an interactive web site. During the meeting, presentations describing challenges for the community were given and discussed in panel sessions and breakout groups. By the end of the meeting, the group reached consensus on eight grand challenges. Some of the overarching themes throughout these challenges that could be described as inverse design enabled by the interplay of simulation and experiment. The intellectual merit of the project are embodied by the eight grand challenges for ceramic science: 1. Understanding rare events in ceramic microstructures. 2. Understanding the phase behavior of interfaces. 3. Predicting and controlling heterogeneous microstructures with unprecedented functionalities. 4. Controlling the properties of oxide electronics. 5. Understanding defects in the vicinity of interfaces. 6. Controlling ceramics far from equilibrium. 7. Accelerating the development of new ceramic materials. 8. Harnessing order within disorder in glasses. The challenges were communicated to the ceramic science community through oral presentations and publications. A complete description of these grand challenges was published in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society and this constitutes the broader impact of the project.
