47312-SE
Nano- and Micro-scale Porous Polymer-Based Systems, at the ACS National Meeting, August 2007, Boston MA
The Symposium on "Nano- and Micro-Scale Porous Polymer-Based Systems" was held at the 234th American Chemical Society National Meeting in Boston, August 19-23, 2007. The organizers of the Symposium were Michael S. Silverstein (Technion - Israel Institute of Technology), Neil R. Cameron (University of Durham), and Bradley F. Chmelka (University of California at Santa Barbara), researchers who have been active in the field of porous materials for many years. The sponsors of the Symposium included the ACS Petroleum Research Fund, the ACS Division of Polymeric Materials Science and Engineering, DSM, and the ACS Presidential Theme "Material Innovations: from Nanotech to Biotech and Beyond!".
The Symposium began on Sunday afternoon and ended on Wednesday afternoon. There were 14 Invited Speakers and 44 oral contributions during the 7 half-day sessions of the Symposium. There were 27 international speakers from 10 different countries in Europe, Asia, and Australia. At least 70 participants attended each of the Symposium's sessions. In addition, there were at least 10 posters associated with the Symposium at the Joint PMSE/POLY Poster Session.
The topics in the Symposium included:
• Pore Generation (3 sessions)
• Biomedical and Biodegradable Materials
• Diffusion, Adsorption, and Reaction
• Low-k Materials
• Nanoparticles and Microparticles
The Symposium featured the most up-to-date research and breakthrough results in the field of porous polymer systems. The purpose of the Symposium was to bring together the various disparate communities that work on porous polymeric materials. The Symposium was able to present topics that had similar underlying themes but originated in a variety of research areas with very different perspectives. Some of the sessions focused on synthesis methodologies while others focused on the characterization of porous structures. The applications for porous polymers that were discussed included low-k dielectrics, membranes, catalysis, absorbents, patterning, drug delivery, and tissue engineering. This was the first time that these disparate research communities were brought together to learn from each other in a venue that specifically targeted porous polymer systems, from fundamentals to applications. The interaction between these very different research groups naturally led to the exchange of novel ideas that will ultimately produce technologies of benefit to society.
The ACS National Meeting was the appropriate venue to hold this Symposium since it enhances access to these discussions by bringing together an enormous number of chemists, physicists, materials scientists, and chemical engineers from all over the world. This large gathering of researchers from different fields was ideal for this Symposium which had the goal of bringing together disparate research communities. The highly respected international and US scientists speaking at the Symposium, the support of the Symposium by a variety of funding sources, and the broad advertisement of the Symposium all contributed to its overwhelming success. This success led to the decision, taken half way through the Symposium, to hold a follow-up symposium on porous polymers at the 238th ACS National Meeting in Washington, DC, August 16-20, 2009.
The organizers gratefully acknowledge the Petroleum Research Fund's generous travel support for the Invited Speakers from abroad. The PRF's support was absolutely essential - it allowed us to bring together world-class scientists and engineers and thus made a key contribution to the Symposium's overwhelming success.
