The Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Polymer Physics has been held in alternate summers since 1969. It is a premier venue for exchange of scientific thought and advances in the field. The program is designed to extend the well established topics in the field and to introduce the community to emerging areas. The 2014 GRC will include twenty-five lectures grouped in five areas: dynamics of polymer melts and glasses; crystallization and self-assembly; interfacial, surface, and nanoconfinement effects; interactions in biomacromolecular systems; and polymers for energy and electronic applications. The associated Gordon Research Seminar provides a complementary venue for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to present their work, interact with one another and senior mentors, thus cultivating scientific exchange and their development towards fruitful careers in the field.
The Gordon Research Conference on Polymer Physics (GRCPP) was held at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA, July 13-18, 2014. The conference was over-subscribed with 199 attendees, representing the full spectrum of endeavor in the field: academia, industry, and government laboratories, U.S. and foreign scientists, senior researchers, young investigators, and graduate students. Of the 199 attendees, 120 voluntarily responded to a general inquiry regarding ethnicity on the registration forms. Of these 120 respondents, 7% were under-represented minorities – 4% Hispanic and 3% African American. Approximately 31% of the participants at the 2014 meeting were women. The Gordon Research Seminar on Polymer Physics (GRSPP) was held the weekend prior to the conference, July 12-13, also at Mount Holyoke College, with an aim of providing a venue for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to interact with senior mentors and with one another to cultivate scientific exchange and develop as researchers. The seminar was similarly over-subscribed, with 58 participants. Thirty-three (33) of the participants voluntarily responded to a general inquiry regarding ethnicity on the registration forms, and of those respondents, 12% were under-represented minorities – 9% Hispanic and 3% African American. Approximately 36% of the participants at the 2014 meeting were women. The scientific focus of the GRCPP meeting is fundamental polymer physics, an interdisciplinary field that impacts diverse industrial sectors, including electronics, transportation, medicine, textiles, and energy. The 2014 program was designed to extend the well-established topics in the field, as well as to introduce the community to emerging areas, such as biomacromolecular and self-assembling macromolecular systems. New work was also highlighted in polymer and glass dynamics, interfacial and confined systems, and materials for energy and electronic applications. The conference featured nineteen lectures by senior researchers focusing on new experimental, simulation, and theoretical developments. In addition, a new session (for GRCPP) was added to the program highlighting work by six young scientists. Of the twenty-five invited speakers, five (20%) were international, seven (28%) were women, and three (12%) were under-represented minorities; of the ten discussion leaders, three (30%) were women. Comments from participants indicated that they appreciated the diversity of both the speakers and topics. The 2014 GRSPP included twelve invited presentations by eight graduate students and four post-doctoral researchers, selected from all the attendees. The lectures were grouped into five sessions which each focused on different aspects of polymer physics from nanocomposites to block copolymers to self-healing. Of the twelve speakers, four (33%) were women, two (16%) were international, and one (8%) was an under-represented minority. Of the seven discussion leaders, all of who were graduate students or post-doctoral researchers, two (28%) were women. In an effort to further increase diversity and encourage participation from a large number of research groups and young researchers, partial GRC registration support was provided to twenty-seven graduate student, postdoctoral, and early career scientist attendees; of these twenty-seven, seven (26 %) were women, two (7 %) were under-represented minorities, and three (11 %) were from predominately undergraduate institutions. For the GRSPP, registration and partial travel support was given to all speakers and registration support was given to all discussion leaders.
