Aspen Winter Conference: Topological Meta-materials and Beyond; Aspen, Colorado; January 2-9, 2017

该奖项将部分支持将于2017年1月2日至9日在科罗拉多州阿斯彭的阿斯彭中心举行的阿斯彭冬季会议：拓扑超材料及超越。会议将集中讨论材料工程的新趋势。资金将特别用于增加应邀发言者群体的多样性，方法是促进代表性不足的少数民族的参与，并将通常不密切互动的社区的人们聚集在一起。传统上，阿斯彭会议主要吸引物理界人士参加。会议组织者坚信，工程社区的成员对于研讨会所涵盖的主题和他们的技术追求是不可或缺的。因此，资金将优先用于激励和促进工程界选定成员的参与，以丰富讲习班的范围和潜在影响。组织者还将努力吸引大量的青少年参与者。其中几位将被选出来展示海报。会议将举办阿斯彭冬季公开讲座，讨论物理和工程拓扑的某些方面，这是会议的主要主题。研讨会活动将集中讨论具有强大和理想性能的工程材料的新趋势，这些材料是现代材料科学的基石。在这一努力中，一种新的范例正在出现，它基于拓扑学思想在材料上的应用——结、链和甜甜圈的数学。在电子系统的背景下进行了广泛的探索，这种新的范式正在将其范围扩展到超材料。无论超材料的主要功能是引导电子、光子、声波和/或机械能的流动，这个新范式都提供了新的机会，作为证据，最近该领域的活动激增，涵盖了从工程到物理的几个社区。本次会议将汇集一些在这一新兴领域最活跃的世界知名的高级和初级科学家，提供令人兴奋的，前沿的和发人深省的讲座，并积极促进和参与广泛的科学讨论和互动，与研究人员，学生和博士后研究员参与者。

This award will partially support the Aspen Winter Conference: Topological Meta-materials and Beyond, to be held at the Aspen Center for in Aspen, Colorado, January 2-9, 2017. The conference will focus on new emerging trends in material engineering. Funds will be particularly devoted to increasing the diversity of the group of invited speakers, both by promoting the participation of under-represented minorities and by bringing together people from communities that do not normally interact closely. Aspen conferences traditionally draw participation mostly from the physics community. The conference organizers strongly believe that members of the engineering community are integral to the topics covered by the workshop and their technological pursuit. Funds will be therefore preferentially devoted to incentivize and facilitate the participation of selected members of the engineering community to enrich the scope and potential impact of the workshop. The organizers will also work to attract a large number of junior participants. Several will be selected to present posters. The conference will host an Aspen Winter Public Lecture on some aspect of topology in physics and engineering, which is the main topic of the conference.The workshop activities will focus on new trends in engineering materials with robust and desirable properties as the cornerstone of modern material science. A new paradigm is emerging in this effort, based on the application to materials of ideas from topology - the mathematics of knots, links and donuts. Extensively explored in the context of electronic systems, this new paradigm is extending its reach to meta-materials. Whether the main function of the meta-material be to guide the flow of electrons, photons, sound waves and/or mechanical energy this new paradigm is providing new opportunities as evidence by the recent explosion of activity in this area, which spans several communities from engineering to physics. This conference is to bring together some of the most active world renowned senior and junior scientists in this emerging field to deliver exciting, cutting-edge and thought-provoking lectures and to actively promote and engage in extensive scientific discussions and interaction with researchers, students, and postdoctoral fellow participants.