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Chemical Reaction Engineering (CRE): The New Frontiers, North American Symposium on Chemical Reaction Engineering, February 2007, Houston, TX
The primary goal of the Second North American Symposium on Chemical Reaction Engineering (NASCRE), held in Houston, TX, February 4-7, 2007, was to promote interactions between industry and academia on frontier topics in chemical reaction engineering (CRE). The chemical industry faces many challenges in the 21st century, including increasing globalization, societal demands and governmental regulations for higher environmental performance, increased productivity and profitability to maintain global competitiveness, higher consumer expectations of product quality, and the changing work force requirements to meet these challenges. In addition, the challenge will be upon us within the next decade or two to produce fuels and synthetic chemicals from non-crude oil based feedstock(s).
The scientific theme for NASCRE-2 "Chemical Reaction Engineering (CRE): The New Frontiers" was aimed at addressing these challenges. NASCRE-2 covers a broad range of topics, from the traditional to newer and emerging fields such as bio-pharmaceutical engineering and fuel cells. To promote a workshop-like environment of open discussion, the organizing committee adopted a non-traditional conference format. Well-known experts in the field served as session chairs. Seven out of eight plenary speakers were industrial experts who reviewed significant advances in their topical area and pointed out some of the “grand challenges” in the field. Additional presentations by leading speakers from industry, academia and governmental funding agencies, followed by a panel discussion and a Q&A session, shed new light on the future challenges and opportunities in our profession.
Impact : The NASCRE-2 participants benefitted from state-of-the-art reviews and presentations by leading experts, by exchanging the latest advances on frontier research subjects, and by debating controversial points with their peers in the CRE discipline. The meeting provided an excellent opportunity for interaction and cooperation among industrial and academic researchers, from various countries around the world. The award of ACS/PRF travel funds attracted leading international scholars to NASCRE-2. The students and other young researchers had an opportunity to interact with each other and with these experienced researchers, which should positively influence their professional development. By placing emphasis on problems which have a strong economic and technological impact, such as the development of fuel cells and biotechnology, the knowledge disseminated in NASCRE-2 will benefit the society at large. We expect that the lectures and the oral/poster presentations will stimulate many follow up investigations on these important topics. The resulting research and development activities will generate new technologies and materials that will enhance the quality of life in society.
Summary of Survey: Following the conference, an e-mail was sent to all the registered NASCRE-2 attendees, requesting them to respond to an on-line survey. The attendees were asked to rate various aspects of the meeting organization and technical content using numerical scores ranging from poor (1) to excellent (5). Space for comments was also provided in the survey. The number of attendees who responded was 85 (~ 45% response). The survey results are presented below in two parts.
The first part provides a summary of the quantitative evaluation based on the ratings of all respondents. The respondents rated the overall meeting experience as “very good” with a high level of satisfaction. The average ratings were “very good” in most categories pertaining to organization (meeting registration cost, opening reception, banquet, abstract and manuscript submission guidelines, poster guidelines, meeting communications, quality of facilities, banquet, etc.). The overall technical content was also rated as “very good”
The second part transmits the essence of comments under the various categories.
• Poster intensive format: The new format (poster preview, poster viewing and poster discussion) was generally received very well with an overall score being 4.2 (very good). There were several helpful suggestions on how the format can be improved, particularly the discussion section.
• Plenary lectures: The overall rating was roughly 3.7 (ranged from 4.1 to 3.3). Some plenary speakers did not do a good job of delivery.
• Panel discussion: was viewed favorably
