The project will fund travel to the 3rd Micro/Nanoscale Heat & Mass Transfer International Conference at Georgia Tech Global Learning Center, Atlanta, GA, on March 3-6, 2012. The Conference is sponsored by the ASME Heat Transfer Division and Georgia Institute of Technology. The importance of nano-science and engineering has been well recognized by research communities and governmental organizations. It is believed that breakthroughs in nano-science and technology will change all aspects of the society, from energy utilization, biomedicine to homeland security.
The conference is intended to provide a forum for researchers and educators around the world to exchange the state-of-the-art research and development and identify research needs in this emerging field. The conference will include keynote and invited presentations, contributed oral and poster presentations, as well as panel discussion on the current status and future opportunities. A special issue of ASME Journal of Heat Transfer will be published after the conference for selected papers that will be reviewed according to the Journal?s review criteria.
The NSF funding will be used to subsidize the registration fees for graduate and undergraduate students so that they can enjoy all social and other functions as regular attendees with significantly reduced cost.
The intellectual merit of this conference is to promote and encourage international collaboration and interactions, especially in the new frontiers of micro/nanoscale heat and mass transfer and their impact to society. Such interactions will enable future opportunities in engineering research, including new directions and transformation research. Many of the participants will present newly research works funded by the National Science Foundation.
The broader impact of the conference is that it will bring together experts in nano-science and engineering which have accomplished nanoscale science and engineering researches that can affect broad areas in materials, energy, transportation, environment, national security, and health care. The conference will promote academic-government-industry collaborations and international corporations. As an effort of human resource development, young researchers, including junior faculty and graduate students, especially those from the underrepresented groups, will be particularly encouraged to attend the conference so that to provide them with opportunities of interaction and collaboration with their peers within and outside of the United States.
The ASME 3rd Micro/Nanoscale Heat & Mass Transfer International Conference was held at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia on March 3-6, with over 320 attendees from 20 countries. The conference was co-sponsored by the ASME Heat Transfer Division and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Professor G. P. "Bud" Peterson was the General Chair and Professor Zhuomin Zhang was the Program Chair. This conference series is dedicated to Dr. Chang-Lin Tien (1935-2002), a world renowned scholar, a leader in higher education, and a close friend and colleague. Professor Tien’s tremendous intellect and unique vision have continued to inspire researchers to expand the frontiers of micro/nanoscale heat and mass transfer. The first two conferences were held in Tainan (January 2008) and Shanghai (December 2009). There were three plenary addresses and six keynote speeches, over 250 oral presentations, and 40 poster presentations. The conference provided a forum for participants (over 200 professionals and 120 graduate students) to discuss state-of-the-art research and development, and to identify the research needs in this emerging field. Nearly 140 peer-reviewed technical papers are included in the proceedings CD. Selected papers will be published after review/revision in a forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Heat Transfer. Furthermore, an NSF/ONR Workshop on Nano/Microscale Thermal Transport was held on Sunday (March 4) in conjunction with the conference with more than 70 attendees. The workshop helps to identify the achievements to date and the challenges and barriers currently faced by the community in the area of nano/microscale transport centered around three major themes: phonon transport fundamentals, materials challenges in thermal management, and heat transfer in microchannels. Additional information can be found from the ASME MNHMT2012 website: www.asmeconferences.org/MNHMT2012/index.cfm Workshop presentations and summaries, as well as pertinent plenary/keynote presentations, can be found from the following website: www.me.gatech.edu/NSF_ONR_Workshop Partial support was provided by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research. The support was used to supplement the registration fee of the key organizers, most plenary and keynote speakers, a few workshop panelists, as well as several post-doctors and a number of graduate students who have provided assistance at the conference. The NSF support also allowed the organizers to lower the registration fee for all students. Additional support was provided by several industrial sponsors including Seagate, Praxair, General Nano Inc., and Teledyne Scientific Company).
