This award provides partial support for two special sessions on "Emerging Areas in Polymer Science and Engineering" at the fall 2013 meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). The program is focused on tunable and responsive polymers, nanoparticles and surfactants, functional gels, smart/reconfigurable polymer networks, interfacial interactions, polymer batteries and capacitors, and transport through structured polymeric matrices. The talks cover an array of polymer research topics, with the overall theme being the use of nanoscale engineering and advanced materials chemistry to manipulate materials structure, properties, and function of polymer systems. The combination of the talks in each session will highlight recent theoretical, simulation, and experimental advances in polymer science and engineering in areas related to energy storage and generation, drug delivery, nanoscale templating, coatings, nanocomposites, and biomaterials.
The speakers represent a broadly diverse group of leaders in the polymer field at different career stages. These focused sessions will cater to graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, faculty, and industrial professionals in a variety of areas related to polymer science and engineering. Furthermore, these sessions will showcase the breadth of emerging polymer-related activities in the chemical engineering community.
ers Fall Meeting Rodney D. Priestley, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Princeton University Final Report to Public: Summary With the support from the National Science Foundation, we were able to organize two by invitation only plenary sessions at the annual American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AICHE) meeting titled "Emerging Areas in Polymer Science and Engineering." These sessions were created to provide a venue for chemical engineers (students, postdocs, faculty and industry) to discuss emerging research in the field of polymer materials and to bring much needed attention to the importance of the field of polymer materials within the greater AICHE organization. The purpose of the two special sessions was to highlight both new areas of polymer science and engineering, as well as to underscore emerging opportunities and unexplored themes in more established areas of polymer science. Though the talks covered an array of polymer science topics, the overall theme was the use of nanoscale engineering and advanced materials chemistry to manipulate materials structure, properties, and function of polymeric systems. They also served the role to showcase researchers at various stages of their career. The informal feedback on these sessions was overwhelmingly positive. The symposium was held during the Annual AICHE meeting in San Francisco, CA in November 2013. Approximately, eight professors participated in the symposium. Funds from the NSF were only used to assist junior faculty to attend the meeting.
