Reports: SE

49579-SE Polymers in Nanoscale Composites and Assemblies, at the 92nd Canadian Society for Chemistry Conference and Exhibition, May 30-June 3, 2009, Hamilton, ON

Alex Adronov, McMaster University

NARRATIVE REPORT OF SPONSORED SYMPOSIUM

The symposium entitled ÒPolymers in Nanoscale Composites and AssembliesÓ, took place at the CSC Conference in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, May 30 to June 3, 2009. Both the conference and this symposium were a huge success, with all-time record attendance for this meeting (close to 2000 people). The symposium was extremely well attended (the room was typically full, with people standing at the back, an average of 50- 75 per session), owing to the high-caliber invited speakers lined up to present their latest research in polymer science. The invited speakers, and their presentation titles are given below:

Mitchell Winnik (U of Toronto) Ð Novel Nanostructures Through Block Copolymer Self Assembly.

Steven Armes (U of Sheffield) Ð A New Highly Efficient Route to Polymer-Silica Colloidal Nanocomposite Particles

Shiping Zhu (McMaster) Ð Nano-Patterning and Chain Conformation of Acrylic Polymers Grafted from Silicon Wafer Surface via ATRP

Takashi Kato (U of Tokyo) Ð Nanostructured Functional Liquid-Crystalline Assemblies

Benoit Simard (National Research Council of Canada) Ð Towards SWCNT-Based High Performance Materials

Stuart Rowan (Case Western Reserve) Ð Dynamic Cellulose Nanocomposites

Steven Holdcroft (Simon Fraser University) Ð Controlling Architectures in Fuel Cell Membranes

All seven speakers delivered excellent presentations and stimulated significant discussion during the question period as well as during coffee breaks. A number of connections between the foreign invited speakers and the Canadian polymer community were made as a result of this symposium.

In addition to the invited speakers, 14 contributed oral presentations, and 10 poster presentations were included as part of the symposium. Of the contributed oral presentations, 12 were presented by graduate students, providing them an opportunity to interact with the invited speakers, and also to present to a large audience that was in attendance largely due to the invited speakers (contributed talks were interspersed between invited talks). All the presentations were high quality, and provided scientific stimulation for the delegates in attendance.