This proposal seeks partial funding for an international conference on the topic of organic nonlinear optics with meeting headquarters at Davos, Switzerland. Travel funds are requested to support U.S. speakers and students. The strategy we will use to get students to attend is to offer bundled support to an academic speaker and one of their students. The purpose of the meeting is to bring together top researchers - whose expertise spans material design, material characterization, device fabrication, and integrated device architectures - to the captive setting of a small town to discuss and assess progress in the field. This upcoming conference is motivated by 5 previous NSF-supported conferences that were held in Pullman, Washington in the summer of 1992; in Val Thorens, France in the winter of 1994 (ICONO'1); in Kusatsu, Japan in the summer of 1995 (ICONO'4). This proposed meeting would be the sixth in the series of meetings that are held every 18 months. The demand for such a meeting was evidenced by full-capacity attendance at ICONO'1, ICONO'2, ICONO'3, and ICONO'4. The strategy is to hold this meeting in those countries that are active in organic nonlinear optics. At the ICONO'1 meeting, U.S. and other non-European attendees had the opportunity to learn about a large array of European research activities that are normally not represented at U.S. conferences. Similarly, at ICONO'2, Pacific Rim research was show-cased. ICONO'3, while held in the United States, was attended by a majority of foreign scientists. ICONO'4 gave U.S. participants a first-hand view of a new university that was built in photonics valley in Japan. NSF-supported students attended all four conferences. The aim of this meeting is to bring together this group of internationally distinguished researches to a forum of Europe that encourages discussion and interactions. This will also give U.S. scientists an opportunity to assess foreign efforts in the fast-growing area of Photonics.
