Argonne National Laboratory will host the seventh annual NSF-DOE Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) Conference on Collaboration in June 2004. A primary objective of this conference will be to define the successes and challenges faced by EPSCoR universities since the first conference which was held in 1997 and to attempt to set strategies and new initiatives and programs for the future. The conference will feature a workshop format focusing on Research Opportunities for EPSCoR States in Emerging Technologies, along with sessions dealing with National Laboratory/University collaboration, especially as it relates to workforce development, and poster sessions that showcase successful programs in the different states.
Intellectual merit: The conference will expose faculty and students from EPSCoR states to a large variety of user-facilities and broad-based programs in emerging technologies at Argonne and other DOE national laboratories. This will have broad implication for fostering collaborations and developing intellectual talent and human resource potential in nanoscience and nanotechnology.
Broader Impact: This multi-institutional conference is designed to foster future collaborations between researchers in EPSCoR states and DOE national laboratories. The conference will also encourage collaboration of EPSCoR principal investigators with principal investigators for the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LS-AMP) program. Such interaction between awardees for these two NSF supported programs (EPSCoR and LS-AMP) is expected to lead to effective strategies for encouraging participation of both faculty and students from underrepresented groups in emerging research areas of nanotechnology and nanoscience.
