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49339-SE
Travel support for foreign speakers at ACS National Meeting symposium: "Active and Responsive Surfaces"

Ryan C. Hayward, ACS Division of Polymer Chemistry, Inc.

This PRF type SE grant was used to provide international travel support for speakers invited to participate in a symposium on “Active and Responsive Surfaces” held at the 237^th National Meeting of the ACS, from March 22 – 26, 2009 in Salt Lake City, UT.  The sponsoring organization was the Division of Polymer Chemistry (POLY), with the division of Polymeric Materials Science and Engineering (PMSE) as co-sponsor.  In addition to PRF support, funds were obtained from POLY, the NSF, Rohm and Haas, and Bausch & Lomb.

The technical program consisted of five oral sessions: two on responsive polymer brushes and thin films, one on controlling biological interactions at surfaces, one on surfaces with electrically- and optically-switchable properties, and one on considerations of interfacial mechanics in creating active surfaces.  Throughout these five sessions, there were twenty invited speakers reflecting a broad diversity of research areas.  A concerted effort was made to feature a number of international speakers, rising stars in the field, and female faculty members.  The invited speakers were as follows:

Nelson Bell (Sandia National Labs)

Paul Bohn (University of Notre Dame)

Ashutosh Chilkoti (Duke University)

Kilwon Cho (Pohang University of Science and Technology, Korea)

Al Crosby (University of Massachusetts)

Dennis Discher (University of Pennsylvania)

Joelle Frechette (Johns Hopkins University)

Mark Geoghegan (University of Sheffield, UK)

Wilhelm Huck (University of Cambridge, UK)

Alain Jonas (University of Louvain, Belgium)

Tom Krupenkin (University of Wisconsin)

Deborah Leckband (University of Illinois)

Nick Melosh (Stanford University)

Milan Mrksich (University of Chicago)

Manfred Stamm (Leibniz Institute, Germany)

Shuichi Takayama (University of Michigan)

Ryan Toomey (University of South Florida)

Christoph Weder (Case Western Reserve University)

Douglas Weibel (University of Wisconsin)

Shu Yang (University of Pennsylvania) 

Funds from this PRF grant were used to provide partial travel support for the five international invited speakers in the amount of $900 each.

In addition to the invited speakers, we received nineteen contributed talks and seven posters, making this one of the most heavily populated symposia in the POLY program.  The sessions were well attended, and we received numerous compliments on the technical quality of the symposium as well as the range of speakers, a number of whom are not regular attendees of POLY programming or even ACS meetings.  Both the large number of contributions to the symposium and the enthusiastic response of the audience confirmed that the topic is important, timely, and of broad interest.  Our ability to offer travel support to international speakers, thanks to this grant, significantly enhanced our ability to attract excellent speakers and to assemble a high quality program.  We are very grateful to the Petroleum Research Fund for this generous support.

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