Support for student travel to the 33rd International Symposium on Combustion, Beijing, China, August 1 - 6, 2010.

University Of Southern California, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

1048498 Ronney This award provides funding to help support travel and living expenses for about 25 graduate (and possibly undergraduate) students to attend the 33rd International Symposium on Combustion and present their research at that venue. All students supported by this grant will be (i) U.S. citizens or permanent residents (ii) Full-time Ph.D. students at an accredited U. S. university (iii) Supported by their academic advisor, as evidenced by a letter of recommendation, and (iv) An author or co-author of a contributed paper accepted by the Program Committee. NSF funds are targeted to increase the participation of graduate students at the meeting. Intellectual Merit: Combustion research is a multi-disciplinary field encompassing diverse disciplines in engineering and science. Society relies on combustion for power generation, transportation, and manufacturing. The combustion symposium provides a forum for international exchange of technical ideas. Policymakers will also be in attendance to participate in the exchange of information. The intellectual merit of this activity arises from the participation of international combustion experts from various countries, dissemination of their technical findings, their communications with students, and their visions of future research directions. Broader impacts: Over 80% of the world's energy production and use is based on the combustion of fossil fuels. Combustion is ubiquitous in traditional energy conversion systems such as automotive engines, stationary and aircraft gas turbines, rocket and space propulsion, electrical power generation, industrial furnaces, and home and institutional space heating. Moreover, emerging technology areas such as hypersonic propulsion, micro scale power generation and material synthesis depend critically on chemically reacting flow processes. The world's dependence on combustion processes has led to many technological challenges including air quality, energy efficiency, global warming, and fire/explosion safety. Thus, combustion is an active, vital area of research.