2019 Global Symposium on Waste Plastic

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This award will provide support for a symposium titled "2019 Global Symposium on Waste Plastic" scheduled for September 19-20, 2019 in Lexington, KY at the University of Kentucky Gatton Student Center. The proposal will provide partial support for attendees, including a significant number of students. The symposium will focus on developing effective strategies for the management of waste plastic accumulation, which is an important and timely challenge facing not only the US but other countries, especially those in the developing world. The magnitude of the problem is exemplified by waste plastic that currently circulates in oceans, which is especially challenging to remediate. A variety of remediation strategies have been implemented to reduce or otherwise control the accumulation of waste plastic, but, they have not been optimized and have negative environmental effects of their own. The symposium will review recent achievements in academia, government, non-profits, and industry to reduce, recover, reuse, recycle, and remanufacture for the waste plastic supply chain.The symposium will provide opportunities for academic, government, industrial, and non-profit researchers to interact with each other through a series of presentations and informal meetings. Participants will reflect diverse fields of research, including biology, chemistry, and engineering disciplines. The symposium will engage a significant number of young researchers, including graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Support will be provided for students, especially those from underrepresented groups in engineering, including persons with disabilities.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.