This Americas Program award, with co-funding from the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Division of Chemistry, will provide support for a two-day workshop on functional and nanomaterials at the Brazilian State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), in August 2009. The organizers of the workshop are: Miguel Garcia-Garibay (UCLA) Randy Duran (Univ. Florida, UF) James Brown (Morehouse College), Ronaldo Pilli (UNICAMP) and Jose Riveros (Univ. Sao Paulo, USP). Scientists from the US and Brazil will discuss emerging aspects of their research. Participants will include students and faculty from UF, UCLA, the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority (LSAMP) Program, UNICAMP, and USP. Topics will include biomolecule patterning techniques at the nanoscale, dynamics of materials, electronic transport in materials, and light harvesting materials. A 1-day short course on nanomaterials is also planned. The main purpose for this activity is to foster joint research collaborations at the frontier of materials science and condensed phase dynamics.
The proposed 2008 workshop and the corresponding short course will attempt to develop an integrated viewpoint of structures and functions necessary to understand and design a new generation of complex materials. A perspective on materials dynamics also allows for a seamless collaboration between experimentalists and theorists with a broad range of expertise and interests. A key goal is to identify collaborative projects involving undergraduate and graduate students and researchers from both countries.
