The 2014 Materials Research Society Spring Meeting will be held April 21–25, 2014, in San Francisco, Calif. The spring meetings have grown considerably in recent years, and this year’s meeting looks to be the largest yet. The scientific sessions will include many new and developing areas of materials research as well as some well-established and popular topics. To complement the scientific sessions, tutorials will provide detailed introductions to particularly exciting areas of research, while the exhibit will showcase products of interest to the materials community. The technical meeting and exhibits will be located at the Moscone West Convention Center, San Francisco Marriott Marquis, and Westin San Francisco Market Street.
Making up the core of the Meeting are the five topical clusters of the technical program, encompassing 57 symposia. Materials for Energy will include symposia with a focus on photovoltaic and photocatalytic materials, materials for carbon capture and sequestration, energy conversion and storage, as well as a broad range of materials systems ranging from oxides and actinides to superconductors. Novel areas will include chemomechanics of energy materials and smart sensor materials, among others.
Soft Materials and Biomaterials will cover a wide range of topics including bioelectronics, self-assembly and hybrid materials, bionanotechnology and multifunctional biomaterials. Several symposia will explore the critical issues involved in interfacing biological systems with synthetic materials for regeneration, imaging, cancer therapies, and sensing. Other areas covered in this cluster will include cell-instructive materials, cellular microenvironments and drug delivery, and the biofunctionalization of organic and inorganic materials.
The group of symposia in Electronic and Photonic Materials will focus on emergent and traditional materials for electronics and photonics as well as advanced concepts for devices and technology. The symposia will cover technology challenges of traditional materials like Si and also novel materials for end-of-roadmap devices. Emergent research areas like organic electronics, transparent electrodes, inorganic semiconductor nanostructures, or phase-change materials will also be included. Several symposia in this cluster will cover research areas related to nonlinear optics, optical metamaterials, and plasmonics, among others.
Nanomaterials will include sessions on the synthesis, characterization, and properties of nanomaterials, with additional symposia devoted to new trends in one- and two-dimensional nanomaterials, ultrasmall clusters, piezotronic and magnetic nanostructures, and metal oxides. Besides the traditional symposia, there is also a novelty symposium dedicated to explore the fundamental areas of nonclassical crystallization.
The cluster on General Materials Science, Theory and Characterization will round out the meeting with symposia on recent advances in high-resolution structural and functional imaging by electron and scanning probe microscopy and scattering techniques, as well as in situ and in operando imaging. Novel areas will include application of “big data” for materials science and materials in extreme environments.
Symposium X on Frontiers of Materials Research will feature presentations for the broad materials community on topics at the forefront of research on materials science and engineering.
The seventh Technology Innovation Forum will focus on “Commercializing Your Materials Research.” Presenters will discuss the “how” of taking a promising materials technology and bringing it to market. The Forum is intended for researchers and entrepreneurs wishing to begin a start-up company or seeking to license their technology to a company, and in particular encourages students to attend.
Various aspects of the topic that will be addressed include how to transition the technology from the laboratory to a start-up company, how to partner with others to succeed, how to access funding, and how to foster “intra-preneurial” thinking within the company.
An award ceremony will be held to honor this year’s Outstanding Young Investigator and MRS Fellows as well as the recipients of the Innovation in Materials Characterization Award—endowed by Toh-Ming Lu and Gwo-Ching Wang—the Mid-Career Researcher Award—endowed by Aldrich Materials Science, and the Gold and Silver Graduate Student Awards.
The meeting will include a plenary address by John J. Tracy, Chief Technology Officer of The Boeing Company. There will also be a presentation by the recipient of the Kavli Lectureship in Nanoscience, yet to be announced.
Poster sessions will be held at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.
The meeting chairs will sponsor a Best Poster Award competition, selecting recipients each night on the basis of the posters’ technical content, appearance, graphic excellence, and presentation quality.
The popular Science as Art competition will again be held at this Meeting. The competition is open to all registered meeting attendees, with entries to be on display in the Exhibit Hall in the Moscone West Convention Center. Multiple first-place and second-place awards of $400 and $200, respectively, will be presented at the Meeting. Guidelines and the deadline for entries will be available on the 2014 MRS Spring Meeting website.
MRS will host a Career Center; services offered to attendees include access to current job postings, a resume file for prospective employers, and on-site interview opportunities.
Graduate students and members of MRS University Chapters are invited to attend the student mixer reception. Also, chapter officers and faculty advisors are invited to attend a meeting of MRS University Chapter representatives to compare notes on recent activities and brainstorm on new projects and issues of common concern. Those interested in starting new chapters are welcome.
The Government Agency Forum, which includes presentations on funding opportunities from US and non-US agencies, and various events for professional development and public outreach are also planned. Public outreach activities include a symposium on educating and mentoring young materials scientists for career development, hands-on activities during coffee breaks; NanoDays demonstrations, and information at the Public Outreach Center about the Society’s outreach programs and information seminars, including opportunities for MRS members to participate.
The deadline to pre-register for the Spring Meeting is April 4, 2014 (5:00 p.m. ET). International travelers are reminded to begin the visa process early. For additional information on the Spring Meeting, contact MRS Member Services, Materials Research Society, 506 Keystone Drive, Warrendale, PA 15086-7573, USA; email info@mrs.org, tel. 724-779-3003, and fax 724-779-8313.
Details of various events and activities will be published in the Program & Exhibit Guide available on-site. The MRS website can be accessed for updated information on confirmed talks and details on special events, for more information on obtaining a visa, and pre-registration at www.mrs.org/spring2014.
