The presidents of the five PACRIM partner societies signed a Memorandum of Understanding to continue the conference collaboration through at least 2031. Credit: ACerS.
“The ‘average’ level of the talks is much higher than usual,” says Miran Gaberscek from the National Institute of Chemistry in Slovenia. I’ve heard similar comments from many other attendees, and, judging from the breaktime networking and business card exchanges I’ve seen, this PACRIM is a huge success.
The good news is that the future of the PACRIM series is solid. The partner societies signed a Memorandum of Understanding ensuring that PACRIM conferences will continue at least through 2031. Signatories pictured above (from left to right) are Hai-Doo Kim, The Korean Ceramic Society; Takashi Goto, The Ceramic Society of Japan; Christopher Berndt, The Australian Ceramic Society; Richard Brow, The American Ceramic Society; and Cewen Nan, The Chinese Ceramic Society.
“The American Ceramic Society is delighted by this opportunity to continue to work with our partner societies to ensure that the PACRIM Conference remains one of the key meetings of the international ceramic science and technology community,” says Brow, ACerS president.
ACerS’ Glass and Optical Materials Division is holding its annual meeting and symposium here at PACRIM, which has led to some great cross-fertilization of symposia and ideas, and also is providing extra visibility for the GOMD awards. This year’s GOMD award lectures—Morey, Kreidl (for students), and Stookey—were all outstanding. Today’s Stookey Award lecture, for example, traced the development of the glass fusion process and the 54 years it took to find a lucrative market—Gorilla Glass. It is unlikely that the engineers who first developed the process could have imagined the devices the glass would be used in—smartphones, tablets, and touchscreen devices—let alone the massive success of the market! The product’s current success is a testimony to their vision and tenacity.
I could go on, but let’s let the pictures tell the story. I also hope you are following the reports of student blogger, Ling Fei. Besides being a perceptive reporter, she is able to provide an attendee’s perspective and comment on the science she is hearing about in the technical sessions.
Denise Krol delivers the GOMD Morey Award Lecture on Tuesday. Credit: ACerS.
The Q&A sessions are often as informative as the lecture. Here, Denise Krol fields questions after the Morey Award lecture. Credit: ACerS.
Jim Phillips talked about “accidental” events and turning points in his career that proved to be pivotal. His guiding principle in the course of his research career has been to “do the simple thing,” and not make things too complicated. Credit: ACerS.
Lina Ma (left) receives the Kreidl Award from GOMD chair Kelly Simmons-Potter after delivering a lecture on based on her PhD work on the structure of phosphate glasses. Credit: ACerS.
Tuesday evening’s poster session featured nearly 200 posters. Tasty refreshments helped tide people over through the early evening event, and the hotel’s historic ballroom was buzzing with scientific conversation. Credit: ACerS.
The best part of the poster session is the opportunity to talk informally about the details. Credit: ACerS.
Tabletop exhibitors talk with attendees during session breaks. Credit: ACerS.
David Pye (ACerS past president, Fellow, and DLM) introduces GOMD award winners at a lunch in their honor sponsored by the ACerS International Journal of Applied Glass Science. Here, he introduces Kreidl Award winner Lina Ma (left). On the right is Hong Li from Morey Award sponsor PPG Industries. Credit: ACerS.
There is more than one way to deliver a lecture, as this year’s Stookey Award winner demonstrated! Award winner, G. Clinton Shay (Corning Inc., retired), was unable to attend in person, so he recorded an introduction and an acceptance speech, and his Corning colleague, Kirk Klingensmith delivered the lecture on his behalf. Credit: ACerS.
Kirk Klingensmith delivers Shay’s Stookey lecture. Credit: ACerS.
View of the beach where tonight’s conference banquet will be. We wish you were here, too! Credit: ACerS.
