Travel Support for an ACS PMSE Symposium "Functional Polymer Nanocomposites for Energy Storage and Conversion", March 22-26, 2009, Salt Lake City, UT

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Travel Support for an ACS PMSE Symposium ?Functional Polymer Nanocomposites forEnergy Storage and Conversion?, March 22-26, 2009, Salt Lake City, UTA. Proposal SummaryThis proposal seeks funding from the Polymer Program, Division of Materials Research,to support travels for invited speakers and presenters in a symposium entitled ?Functional Polymer Nanocomposites for Energy Storage and Conversion? to be held at the 237th ACS national meeting, Salt Lake City, UT in March 22-26, 2009. This symposium is sponsored by the Division of Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering (PMSE). The co-organizers of this symposium are the PI and Prof. Qing Wang at Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Pennsylvania State University. With the soaring of global oil prices and global warming, energy crisis has become a pressing issue that challenges everyone?s standards of life, societal security, and economy. Advanced functional materials including polymers start to play an unprecedented role in our ultimate objective of sustainable and clean energy production, energy transportation & storage, and end uses. As a timely symposium on the energy issues, this symposium focuses on applications of advanced polymer nanocomposites in electric energy storage, polyelectrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells, and organic photovoltaics. Three objectives are aimed: 1) This symposium is going to highlight the frontier scientific research and technologies in advanced polymer nanocomposites for energy storage and conversion by invited presentations from international and the U.S. academic institutions and industries; 2) It is also going to shine lights for the future directions of polymer nanocomposites for energy storage and conversionapplications. 3) Educational efforts will be endeavored to enhance the national awareness of the feasibility and importance of polymer nanocomposites for energy storage and conversion. Although the past ACS symposiums have highlighted polymer nanocomposites, this symposium is the first one in ACS to emphasize their applications in energy storage and conversion. Intellectual Merit This symposium will provide a forum for researchers from interdisciplinary fields to present and exchange their cutting edge and/or unpublished results of functional polymer nanocomposites for capacitors, PEM fuel cells, and solar cells. It also provides an excellent opportunity for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to learn from the invited talks andfrom one another by participating in oral and poster presentations. Broad Impact due to the timely energy focus, this symposium will receive significant attention from a broad range of chemistry, physics, and materials researchers in the U.S. and world wide. Preprints of all invited talks, contributed talks, and posters will be published in the Spring 2009 volume of the PMSE Preprint. This symposium encourages participation of young/starting investigators, female researchers, graduate students and postdocs from both academic andindustries. A certain amount of the requested fund will also be used to support travels of graduate students and postdocs with an emphasis on female, minority, and underrepresented groups.