Erice 2009: International School on High-pressure Crystallography - unique educational experience for young American scientists in geophysics and mineral physics

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proposal seeks funds to support participation of eight young scientists (undergraduate, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers) in the International School on High-pressureCrystallography, which will take place in Erice, Italy, between June 4 and 14, 2009.International Schools of Crystallography (ISC) have been held at the Ettore Majorana Centrein Erice since 1974 each year and have dealt with a broad variety of crystallographic topics.ISC have long been recognized by the international scientific community as a premiere educationalopportunity in advanced crystallography. The title of the 2009 School will be: "High-pressure Crystallography: From Novel Experimental Approaches to Applications in Cutting-Edge Technologies".The topics covered at the 2009 school will be of great importance to the new generation of geophysics and mineral physics scientists. New, groundbreaking experimental techniques, as well as advanced computational approaches used to study structure, properties and transformations of minerals in Earth and planetary interiors, as well as the theoretical background necessary to understand these phenomena will be covered. Additional multidisciplinary topics such as synthetic chemistry aspects, or behavior of biomolecules and microorganisms at high pressure will create a unique blend of subjects that will equip the participants with a very broad overview and understanding of high-pressure science.Erice Schools have a program of about 10 days of intensive training and interaction, and are attended by approximately 30 lecturers and 100 students. All lecturers are very accomplished scientists with international reputation. The school has a unique format, truly focused on education, which emphasizes direct hands-on exercises and stimulates active interaction between the instructors and the students in a fashion similar to the Gordon Research Conferences.Another very important and unique feature of the Erice schools is the availability of the whole course though web broadcasting system, which has been successfully conducted since 2003,and extended the access to the course lectures and materials to a much broader, international student body. As determined by the organizers of previous schools, at peak hours, as many as seven hundred scientists around the world were remotely participating in the Erice lectures.It is also worth noting that the remote participation allows interaction with the lecturers via chat-room service.The general policy for producing course teaching materials consists of requesting each invited lecturer to write a 5-10 page summary of his/her contribution, including a comprehensive list of references. The collected lecture notes are distributed to participants on their arrival. The lecture notes are published in a mongraph book form by international printing companies. The funds requested in this proposal are to cover partial cost of accommodation and subsistence of eight young participants from US institutions ($1000 per student). Supplemental support has been provided by COnsortium for Materials Research in Earth Sciences (COMPRES).