This U.S.-Mexico award will support a Symposium on Complex Fluids to be held in conjunction with a larger conference on statistical physics in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, August 24-29, 2003. The meeting has been organized by Dr. Phillip Pincus, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, together with Dr. Magdaleno Medina-Noyola and Dr. Jaime Ruiz Garcia, both of the Institute of Physics of the Universidad Autonoma de San Luis de Potosi.
The complex fluids field is highly interdisciplinary, relying on insights from several disciplines, such as physics, biology, chemistry, and engineering. On the international scale, it has become a major area for applications and is of increased relevance to the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, biomedical engineering, and newly emerging nano-electronics and photonics efforts that use soft matter components. Furthermore the corresponding development of instrumentation and computational algorithms is vital. Both the United States and Mexico have active program in complex fluids. This symposium will provide increased visibility for the challenges and opportunities in the field as well as enhancing specific US-Mexico cooperation. The Division of Materials Research and the Office of International Science and Engineering are contributing to the support of this activity.
