Travel Support: XI Iberoamerican Conference on Phase Equilibria and Fluid Properties for Process Design, Equifase 2018

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New thermodynamic data and models are essential for optimizing the performance of conventional chemical processes and for developing new energy efficient and environmentally sustainable ones. Furthermore, thermodynamic data and models are central to scientific advances in designing and manufacturing advanced materials. This grant will provide partial support for US-based junior faculty and young researchers from diverse backgrounds to attend the XI Iberoamerican Conference on Phase Equilibria for Process Design (EQUIFASE 2018). The conference will be held from October 22 - 25, 2018 in the city of Carlos Paz, in the province of Cordoba, Argentina. The goal of this international conference is to identify new opportunities in research and education and to promote international collaboration related to basic data for chemical process design and optimization. The conference is unique in the wide participation of researchers and students from South American countries, providing the only meeting that brings much of this community together with researchers from the international community.EQUIFASE 2018 will focus on improved thermodynamic data and advanced computational models to enable optimal design of processes related to energy conversion and storage, chemical processing, materials fabrication, to maximize energy efficiency and environmental sustainability. Intellectual merits of the conference include: (1) Identification of key challenges in conventional process industries and in new areas of process intensification related to processing of energy, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and bio-chemicals. (2) Development of a roadmap to address these challenges by promoting collaboration that integrates methods of experimental design, molecular modeling and computation, and modern approaches of machine learning. Education will be a key topic of the conference with focus on international collaborations in distance learning and open courses. The young conference participants, many from underrepresented groups in STEM, will benefit from state-of-the-art reviews and presentations by leading experts, by exchanging the latest advances on frontier research subjects relating to molecular thermodynamics and chemical processes, and by debating controversial points with their peers. The conference will also provide an excellent opportunity for interaction and cooperation among academic and industrial researchers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.