Group Travel Grant for Sixth Mediterranean Chemical Engineering Conference (EMCC-6) to be held on March 7-12, 2010 in Belek, Antalya, Turkey. No peer review needed in accordance with NSF (PAM, V.B2.m) requesting awards for conferences, symposia, and workshops.
This project provides for travel funds for U.S. academic representatives to attend the 6th Chemical Engineering Conference for Collaborative Research in Eastern Mediterranean (EMCC-6) to be held on March 7-12, 2010 at the Atlantis Hotel, Belek, Antalya, Turkey. The participating countries are Turkey, Greece, Israel, Jordan, Italy, Bulgaria, Rumania and the United States. Academic chemical engineers from other Eastern Mediterranean countries will also be invited.
Intellectual Merit: The purpose of the Workshop is to update researchers from the participating countries with the new and potentially transformative research in five areas in chemical engineering: Challenges in water treatment/chemical engineering aspects of water stress; future energy engineering; process intensification; nano and hybrid materials and biological engineering. In addition, there will be post-dinner workshops on sustainable energy future energy engineering and chemical engineering for a clean environment. These areas were selected since they are critical technology areas in all of the participating countries. This is the sixth conference of a series. The five previous successful conferences were at the Technion, in Haifa, Israel in March 1999 with representatives from Turkey, Israel and the U.S.; in Ankara (Middle Eastern Technical University) in May, 2001 with participation by chemical engineers from Greece as well as the other three countries; in Thessaloniki, Greece in May 2003 with participation by the four participating countries; at the Dead Sea, Israel in January 2006 with participation from Italy, Romania and Bulgaria as well as the other four countries and at Cetraro Italy, 2008 with participation from all seven countries. Prof. Yuda Yurum from Sabanci University (TURKEY) will be the Chair of the Conference. The US EMCC coordinating committee, consisting of Steve Cramer (Rensselaer), Nick Abbott (Wisconsin) and Alex Katz (Berkeley), is organizing a first class group of approximately 25 U.S. presenters who will be invited from the five research areas. This will include a blend of senior researchers and promising young investigators. Distinguished invited presenters from the other countries have committed to participate and approximately 20 investigators from each country will be invited to give oral or poster presentations. Poster presentations by graduate students will also be included in the program. Special travel supplements will also be provided to five US participants to visit and lecture in Turkey and the other countries (Israel, Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria or Rumania) to develop and/or promote collaborations.
Broader Impact: It is expected based on past conference results that there will be a significant and broad impact on the US engineers attending the next EMCC conference. The first three EMCC Conferences have had major impacts in acquainting US, Turkish, Israeli, and Greek academics with their research interests and capabilities and in fostering research collaborations. The fourth and fifth conferences provided further opportunities, by expanding the conference to include Italy, Bulgaria and Rumania. An added benefit of these conferences is the exposure they have provided for large numbers of graduate students from the Eastern Mediterranean to interact directly with both seasoned and young faculty researchers from the U.S. and the other countries. In addition, these conferences have provided excellent forums for fruitful discussions on curriculum issues among faculty of the participating countries. In addition to the personal contacts that the U.S. participants will make with people from the other countries, it will be beneficial to U.S. interests to foster exchanges of research and teaching ideas and of personnel, and establish research collaborations between chemical engineers from the U.S. and chemical engineers from the Eastern Mediterranean countries. It is also likely that recruitment of potential graduate students may occur informally, as in the past. Finally, it is also the intention of the conference series to have significant industrial/societal impacts on the participating countries through the extensive scientific and personal exchanges that occur in this multicountry Gordon style conference.
This grant was for travel funds for U.S. academic representatives to attend the 6th Chemical Engineering Conference for Collaborative Research in Eastern Mediterranean (EMCC-6) that was held on March 7-12, 2010 at the Atlantis Hotel, Belek, Antalya, Turkey. The participating countries were Turkey, Greece, Israel, Jordan, Italy, Bulgaria, Rumania and the United States. The purpose of the Workshop was to update researchers from the participating countries with the state of the art of research in five areas in chemical engineering: Challenges in water treatment-chemical engineers for water stress; future energy engineering; process intensification; nano and hybrid materials and biological engineering. In addition, there were post-dinner workshops on sustainable energy-future energy engineering and chemical engineering for a clean environment. These areas were selected since they are critical technology areas in all of the participating countries. Prof. Yuda Yurum from Sabanci University (TURKEY) was the Chair of the Conference. There were 22 US participants in the meeting which was put together by the US EMCC coordinating committee consisting of Steve Cramer (Rensselaer), Nick Abbott (Wisconsin) and Alex Katz (Berkeley). This team of first rate US investigators in the areas of energy and the environment, biological engineering and nanomaterials presented truly outstanding state of the art research presentations these areas. In addition, there were extremely high level talks from participants from the other participating countries which resulted in a very stimulating, cross disciplinary technical program. The conference included an excellent poster session with many posters from graduate students from Turkey and other countries as well as a wonderful social program that promoted a friendly and interactive environment for the participants from the various countries. Special travel supplements were also be provided to some US participants to visit and lecture in Turkey and the other countries (Israel, Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria or Rumania) to develop and/or promote collaborations. The 6th EMCC conference was very successful. Five topics were the focus for the 2010 conference (Belek, Turkey) because of their importance in chemical engineering research and education in the participating countries. They were also important to the Eastern Mediterranean economies, as well as that of the United States. The topics were as follows: 1) Challenges in water treatment: chemical engineering for water stress, 2) Future energy engineering, 3) Process intensification, 4) Nano and hybrid materials, 5) Biological engineering. Three days of formal presentations, poster presentations and panel discussions covered the five topics. Two major plenary talks were included as well as many keynote talks. Professor James Liao (UCLA) delivered a plenary talk entitled "Fuels and Chemicals Beyond Petroleum" and Professor Menachem Elimelech (Yale) delivered a plenary talk entitled "Science and Technology for Sustainable Water Supply". A detailed listing of the program are given in the attached file to this report. In addition, detailed information on this conference can be found at the web site (http://myweb.sabanciuniv.edu/emcc6). The funds from this grant have been employed to support travel to the conference as well as for travel to further ongoing collaborations between the US participants and their collaborators from other countries.
