An international conference on energy with a focus on molecular photonics has been organized for September 2010 at the University of Washington?s marine biology station in the San Juan Islands in Washington State. This is being organized on a similar basis as the 2007 conference under the name of "International Conference on Molecular Photonics: Interaction of Light with Nanostructured Materials". This conference follows up on the 2007 conference with a focus on light-matter interactions and expands to additional novel energy related research topics. The goal is to highlight the science and technologies that can provide the means for sustainable energy. For example, significant advances have been made in developing organic materials for both photovoltaic applications and solid state lighting. These advances as well as other energy fields, such as energy storage and photocatalysis, promise to provide novel technologies that can develop into robust renewable energy strategies and address the challenges of climate change. The Solid State and Materials Chemistry program provides support for the participation of graduates students, post-docs and young faculty to attend the conference.
NONTECHNICAL One of the major goals for this conference is to increase participation from graduate students and post-docs. With this in mind, the number of invited speakers has been kept intentionally small (15 speakers over 2.5 days) such that ample time can be allocated to students and post-docs to interact with key researchers in the field. More than 50 out of the 60 participants are expected to be students or post-docs. Through the outreach program that has been set-up through the University of Washington, Science and Technology Center (STC) - Materials & Devices for Information Technology Research (MDITR), students from Norfolk State University, a Historically Black-College and University (HBCU) have also been invited to attend the conference.
" was held at the University of Washington Friday Harbor Laboratories. With increasing concerns over rising fuel costs, decreasing amounts of fossil fuels, and increasing concerns over climate change, we felt that it was crucial to address the issues related to how we harvest our energy and convert them into electricity/fuel. To this end, the focus of this workshop was to bring together leading experts in the field from around the world who work on energy related research, to highlight recent advances in this field, and to encourage cross-fertilization of ideas. 16 speakers presented their work over the 3 and ½ day conference (Sept. 19-22, 2010). 65 participants were present – these included people from local industry, universities, and government labs. Energy related research is an extremely broad field. As such, the focus was narrowed down to energy conversion technologies that use light-matter interaction, such as photovoltaics and photocatalysts. The conference was a resounding success, and we were able to achieve our goals of increasing interactions between research groups across the globe. We intend to hold a similar conference again next year to ensure that we remain up to date in the field, and to ensure that the interactions continue to grow.
