Gordon Research Conference on Chemical Separations: Separations Breakthroughs for Commodity and Specialty Chemicals, Environmental Science and Analytical Chemistry

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This NSF award will support speaker and attendee travel to the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Chemical Separations, held in Galveston, TX on January 26-31, 2020. Chemical Separations is a new topic for the well-respected GRC conference organization. Separation steps are involved in producing nearly every chemical product. Therefore, new ideas and improvements in chemical separations are of vital interest to a variety of industrial sectors. New, non-thermal technologies are desperately needed to decrease reliance on energy-intensive distillation. This process often requires high temperatures, as distillation separates liquids based on difference in their boiling points. Targeted chemical separations are critical to management of radioactive waste. Similarly, analytical separations that can be applied to complex mixtures are vital in streamlining development of new drugs and detecting environmental contaminants. The funds requested from NSF will be used to support travel for speakers, especially distinguished female invited speakers, and travel for graduate student, postdoctoral and early career professional attendees. The Chemical Separations GRC aims to connect chemists, materials scientists and chemical engineers in order to discuss topics such as: translating separations science to applications, commodity scale chemical separations, bioseparations, membrane separations, adsorption-driven separations, intensified separation processes, selective capture of ions, designer sorbents and solvents, and separations in complex environments. The opportunity for attendees to hear from experts in a diverse range of application domains will be attractive to both seasoned researchers and early career professionals. The funds provided by NSF will be used to support travel for speakers, especially distinguished female invited speakers, graduate students, postdocs and early career professionals presenting a poster. At GRCs, these poster sessions are a core part of the conference program and are well attended.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.