This proposal requests partial travel support for U.S. participants to attend the 10th International Conference on the Fundamentals of Adsorption (FOA10) in Awaji, Japan, May 23rd-28th 2010. The funds will be used to support the travel of tenure-track faculty members and their graduate students in U.S. educational institutions, as well as researchers from US nonprofit research institutions who will have an oral or poster presentation at the meeting. Priority will be given to young faculty (who have been in academia for no more than 5 years) and graduate students.
The FOA series of conferences has become the premier international conference in the field of Adsorption. The conference is well attended by researchers from throughout the World. Many of the attendees are Chemical Engineers but there are also significant numbers of Chemists, Physicists and members of other disciplines, and the level of industrial participation is high. Thus the conference is an excellent forum for the exchange of ideas and information between scientists, engineers in academia and industrial practitioners in the field. A hallmark of the conference is its comprehensive coverage of the spectrum of fundamental research and applications of adsorption, ranging from molecular modeling and simulation of fluids adsorbed in porous materials to the design of pressure swing adsorption systems for industrial gas separation processes.
Technological advances in energy, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and environmental applications of adsorption will be facilitated by FOA10 through sharing of new adsorption-related scientific information at the highest level. Additional broader impacts will be associated with the participation of young faculty and doctoral students (facilitated by the proposed travel funds), and their exposure to the frontiers of adsorption science and technology in a truly interdisciplinary and international scientific gathering.
