This project will support the participation of student and postdoctoral researchers in the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) and Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) on Renewable Energy: Solar Fuels. The GRS and GRC will be held at the Four Points Sheraton Hotel in Ventura, CA on January 18-19, 2014 and January 19-24, 2014, respectively. The GRS, which is primarily attended by students and postdocs, and the GRC, which features oral presentations by the leading scientists in the field, will bring together senior and junior researchers, including engineers, chemists, materials scientists, biologists, and physicists, to explore the most outstanding technological challenge of the 21st century: the efficient, and ultimately cost-effective and globally scalable, transformation and storage of solar energy using carbon-neutral sources.
The GRS program will feature oral and poster presentations accompanied by informal and formal discussions with a small number of attendees (60 participants). The presentations will be divided into three sessions, in which the most important aspects of solar fuels research and development will be addressed. The first session will be devoted to the light-capture and charge transfer in solid-state and biological/biomimetic systems. The second session will be focused on materials and molecules that can catalyze reactions desirable for the development of solar fuel cells. The concluding session will emphasize integrated systems for solar fuels production. Approximately half of the GRS participants are expected to attend the GRC, where attendance will be capped at 200. The GRC program will include invited and contributed oral and poster presentations by both younger and more established researchers, focusing on the best emerging science in the field. The GRC will provide participants a state-of-the-art view of the interdisciplinary science of solar fuels, with eight topical sessions, two poster sessions, and one final session of late-breaking results and short talks drawn from the poster presentations.
This problem is of key importance in developing a sustainable energy economy, as solar fuels will ultimately provide a supply of transportation and aviation fuel from domestic, renewable resources. However, the technical problems are formidable and are in many ways distinct from the well-established technology of solar photovoltaics. The field is inherently interdisciplinary, requiring basic scientific advances on several fronts, coupled with efforts to integrate them into functioning systems. The themes of the GRC and GRS have been chosen to represent the key problems in the field and to stimulate the exchange of ideas between a diverse group of scientists and engineers.
The GRC and GRS will promote international collaboration in the science and engineering that underpins the development of a future solar fuels technology to provide a sustainable source of clean energy. It will also provide networking opportunities, mentoring, and perspectives on new research for younger participants at a critical stage in their scientific careers.
The Gordon Research Conferences provide a private forum for the free and open discussion of ideas at the frontiers of science and technology. Participants have the opportunity to discuss unpublished work and to explore new issues and ideas in the formative stage. The long-term agenda for research in an area is set based on these discussions and new interdisciplinary research areas often develop from the interactions and discussions at the meetings. The 2014 Gordon Conference on "Renewable Energy: Solar Fuels" will explore new ideas and progress in the problem of generating chemical fuels from water and other renewable feedstocks using sunlight as the energy source. The Conference will cover topics ranging from advances in understanding natural photosynthetic and enzymatic processes to synthetic model systems for artificial photosynthesis, nanomaterial-based approaches, and system concepts based on semi-synthetic organisms and solar thermal/chemical conversion. The Conference will bring together young and established investigators who are at the forefront of their fields to explore these interdisciplinary themes. Participants, including students and postdocs, are encouraged to present their results in poster sessions, and some poster presenters will be selected for short talks. The collegial atmosphere of this Conference, with programmed discussion sessions and informal gatherings in the afternoons and evenings, provides a unique international forum in which the academic and industrial scientists can exchange ideas to advance the field of renewable energy.
