The travel grant request is for partial travel support for graduate students presenting posters in a Poster Symposium at the ASME Micro-Nano Technology Forum at the ASME IMECE 20112 in Houston, TX. The plan is to support nearly 40 meritorious graduate students from a pool of nearly 150-200 posters that will be presented during this forum. Students selected will be on the basis of merit and diversity.
Professional development of talented, diverse group of scientists in critical emerging areas is an important need for the nation and a priority for NSF. The travel grant is focused on doctoral students preparing for careers in academia and industry and in the vital technological area of nano and micro technology that NSF, CBET and the Thermal Transport program have heavily invested in for over a decade. The ASME IMECE is the premier conference for mechanical engineers and in the nano-technology area, and is therefore a good venue for the proposed poster presentations. The students will be exposed to cutting edge emerging research across the country and world, and those presenting will be able to further develop their professional skills in technical presentations. Beyond that, students attending will have the opportunity to learn from a variety of sources, as approximately 2000 presentations are generally presented at this annual meeting, further facilitating idea development for future careers in research. It is anticipated based on previous year attendance that over 150 presentations will be made, and there will be over 300 attendees.
Nano technology science research is now maturing and leading to transformational technology. Supporting this grant will foster interactions between budding researchers and entrepreneurs and will promote the technology and its transformational aspects.
The conference is expected to help in professional development, and students will be supported with an eye on diversity and encouraging under-represented group participation. Student selection will be done by an expert panel organized by the PIs from the posters submitted to the symposium. Opportunities that exist for postdoctoral positions and faculty as well as opportunities facilitated by other governmental agencies (e.g. DoD) will allow for important career development analyses. By attending, students will also have the option to attend professional development workshops and seminars that go beyond the traditional scientific development into areas important for career success, such as public speaking skills and resume/CV preparation.
The Forum brought together ASME members and others, with a focus on new developments in the field of micro and nanotechnology. For the past four years the forum has been enthusiastically embraced by ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE) attendees, in particular students; each year, there have been more than 200 poster presentations and about 500 attendees at the forum. The NSF award was used to further nurture student development by encouraging participation from a select group of meritorious students working in the general area of micro-/nanoscale engineering by providing them partial travel grants including expenses related to conference registration fees and lodging. The travel awards was decided by a panel of experts from the Micro and Nano Forum organizing committee, and was based on the technical quality of the poster abstracts submitted and statement from their research advisors. Student travel awards was made to about 40 students to attend the 2012 ASME Society-Wide Micro and Nano Technology Forum at the IMECE 2012. Each student was reimbursed up to $750 to defray the cost of participation in the Forum. These funds was used to cover the cost of conference registration ($200 for student ASME members) and lodging for four nights.
