International Symposium on Clusters and Nanostructures

Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond VA

Investigators

Abstract

This award is made on funds from the Division of Materials Research in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate and the Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation Division in the Engineering Directorate. This award provides participant support for the conference: 'International Symposium on Clusters and Nanostructures' to be held in Richmond, Virginia on the dates November 7-10, 2011. The symposium will focus on the roles clusters and nanostructures play in solving outstanding problems in clean and sustainable energy, environment, and health; three of the most important issues facing science and society. Many of the materials issues in renewable energies, environmental impacts of energy technologies as well as beneficial and toxicity issues of nanoparticles in health are intertwined. Addressing both fundamental and applied materials issues requires a multidisciplinary approach. The objective of the Richmond symposium is to provide such a forum by bringing researchers from physics, chemistry, materials science, and engineering fields to share their ideas and results, identify outstanding problems, and develop new collaborations. Clean and sustainable energy will address challenges in production, storage, conversion, and efficiency of alternate energies and will cover solar, wind, bio, thermo-electric, and hydrogen. Environmental issues will deal with air- and water-pollution and conservation, environmental remediation and hydrocarbon processing. Topics in health will include therapeutic and diagnostic methods as well as health hazards attributed to nanoparticles. Cross-cutting topics such as reactions, catalysis, electronic, optical, and magnetic properties will also be covered. In a single forum, this symposium will address important issues in energy, environment, and health and the manner in which they are intertwined. With no parallel sessions and with participants and speakers from academia, government laboratories and industry, the symposium will foster an interacting environment where new ideas can be brought into focus and pursued. The oral sessions will include invited talks as well as hot-topics to be selected from contributed abstracts. Participants can also present their research in two poster sessions. Graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and minorities will participate in the meeting. Invited talks will be made available through the conference website and papers presented at the symposium will be published either as conference proceedings or in an archival journal for wide dissemination.