Travel Support for Broadening Participation of Researchers in the 2024 REMADE Institute Circular Economy Tech Summit & Conference; Washington, DC; 10-11 April 2024

Sustainable Manufacturing Innovation Alliance Corp., West Henrietta NY

Investigators

Abstract

This award provides travel support for students and young faculty, especially, from underrepresented or underserved groups in STEM education to attend and participate in the REMADE Institute Circular Economy Tech Summit and Conference. REMADE Institute’s goal is to develop technologies to reuse, remanufacture, and recycle energy-intensive materials. REMADE’s mission is to foster manufacturing technologies that reduce embodied energy and decrease emissions. This conference aims to provide a forum to share leading-edge research on technologies that accelerate the US's transition to a Circular Economy. The conference offers participants an opportunity to showcase their scientific accomplishments, interact with peers and colleagues from academia, government labs, and industry, extend their network, and foster new collaborations within the broader advanced manufacturing community. Consistent with NSF's goal to broaden the participation of groups underrepresented in science and engineering, the REMADE Institute preferentially allocates travel funds to underrepresented minorities, women, and persons with disabilities. This approach promotes greater diversity in STEM fields and benefits the nation by educating and training a skilled workforce better prepared to provide transformative solutions to overcome challenges in their chosen fields. The conference meets the national priorities of advancing manufacturing, economic prosperity, environmental quality, as well as achieving diversity, equity and inclusion. The REMADE Institute anticipates conference attendance benefits the students and young faculty's professional, scientific and technical development. The conference’s goal is to integrate the materials lifecycle stages which are design, manufacturing, remanufacturing, and recycling with a system-level perspectives designed to identify crosscutting research collaboration opportunities. These underestandings are critical to the achievement of a circular economy. The conference includes talks by leading domestic and international speakers, who discuss their latest research on topics such as regenerative economy, recovery/recycling/remanufacturing technologies, role of circular economy in a resource-constrained world, industrial ecology, overcoming supply chain challenges, net zero emissions in manufacturing, industrial decarbonization, technologies for transforming materials recovery facilities, and others. Additionally, the conference enables students and young faculty to enhance their communication skills through oral and poster presentations and in-depth discussions of their work with their peers. This interactive experience significantly broadens the education and training of students and young faculty from underrepresented groups, increases their enthusiasm for the research topic, acquaints them with expectations for scientific careers, and exposes them to new approaches and opportunities for innovative research. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.