Gordon Research Conference on Multifunctional Materials and Structures; Ventura, California; January 31-February 5, 2016

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The Gordon Research Conferences provide an international forum for the presentation and discussion of frontier research in the biological, chemical, and physical sciences, and their related technologies. For over 80 years, high-quality and cost-effective meetings organized by Gordon Research Conferences have been recognized as the world's premier scientific conferences, where leading investigators from around the globe discuss their latest work and future challenges in a uniquely informal, interactive format. These forums are especially important for exploring new scientific frontiers and for training and supporting young scientists and engineers (including graduate students) in their early careers. This award partially supports a new Gordon Conference on the emerging field of multifunctional materials and structures to be held in early 2016.Multifunctional materials and structures have the ability to perform multiple functions through a judicious combination of structural properties and at least one additional function such as thermal management, shape morphing, energy harvesting, etc. This conference seeks to address fundamental scientific issues that have broad application in the field including: translation of model biological functions to synthetic materials, accelerating transport or dynamic chemical changes in strong, stiff materials, optimizing interfaces between hard and soft materials, multi-physics modeling of multi-component systems, etc. The potential applications of multifunctional materials and structures includes visionary advancements such as (a) "autonomic" structures that can sense, diagnose and respond to external stimuli with minimal external intervention, (b) "adaptive" structures allowing reconfiguration or readjustment of functionality, shape and mechanical properties on demand, and (c) "self-sustaining" systems with structurally integrated power harvest/storage/transmission capabilities.