The 46th ICACC perseveres despite pivot to virtual meeting for second straight year

[Image above] ECD officers Hisayuki Suematsu, Palani Balaya, and Jingyang Wang welcome ACerS president Elizabeth Dickey during the opening session of ICACC 2022 on Monday, Jan. 24. Credit: ACerS

For the second consecutive year, the International Conference on Advanced Ceramics and Composites was held as a virtual, live meeting from Jan. 24–28, 2022, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

ICACC is an annual meeting organized by ACerS Engineering Ceramics Division (ECD). It has a long and illustrious history of being the preeminent international meeting on advanced structural and functional ceramics, composites, and other emerging ceramic materials and technologies.

This year marked the conference’s 46^th occurrence, but the expectation of meeting in Daytona Beach, Fla., was halted due to the surge of the new Omicron variant that swept the United States and countries around the world in December and January. As a result, the ACerS Executive Committee along with the ECD meeting organizers made the decision to pivot to a fully virtual conference just weeks before the schedule start date.

“Despite the hard decision to pivot ICACC 2022 from hybrid to a fully virtual event, I am amazed with the splendid response by the ceramic community for their active participation,” says program chair Palani Balaya of the National University of Singapore. The conference featured 158 sessions and welcomed nearly 700 participants from 37 countries, including 123 students.

The technical program for this year’s meeting reflects the growth and success of ICACC by featuring 18 symposia, five focused sessions, the Annual Global Diversity Award Session, and the 11^th Global Young Investigator Forum. In addition, the National Institute of Standards of Technology sponsored a discussion panel on direct ink writing as part of Symposium 15, 5^th International Symposium on Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing Technologies.

Balaya says he received positive feedback from participants about the high quality of research work shared during the conference. Below are highlights from the week-long meeting.

Opening award session

Balaya and ECD chair Hisayuki Suematsu of Nagaoka University of Technology partnered in leading the opening award session on Monday, Jan. 24. The awards, presenters, and presentation titles are listed below.

James I. Mueller Memorial Award: Richard Sisson, Worcester Polytechnic Institute,
The future of materials engineering education

ECD Bridge Building Award: Jingyang Wang, Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, CAS, Advanced environmental barrier coatings for SiC_f/SiC composite

Plenary: Y. Shirley Meng, University of California, San Diego, Designing better ceramic materials for future batteries

Plenary: Thomas Speck, University of Freiburg, Plant materials systems and structures: Bio-inspiration for a “greener” technology in the 21^st century

Five ECD members were also honored during the opening session with ECD’s Global Star Award for their great support to the success of ICACC 2022. This year’s recipients included Olivier Guillon, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany; Valerie L. Wiesner, NASA Langley Research Center; Emanuel Ionescu, Technische Universität Darmstadt; Bai Cui, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; and Amjad A. Almansour, NASA Glenn Research Center.

Student and young professional events

Winners of the ICACC 2021 student poster contest were announced during the opening award session of ICACC 2022. Three posters were awarded first place:

• J Sharma et al., for “In situ synchrotron diffraction of DyPO₄ pressure-induced phase transformation under variable hydrostaticity”
• Takenobu Sakai et. al., for “Evaluation of mechanical characteristics of GFRP with titanium coating for preventing the ultraviolet degradation”
• Useche dos Santos Inchauspe et al., for “Two-steps reactive cold sintering of geopolymer”

Sunmi Shin, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the National University of Singapore, was presented with the ECD Global Young Investigator Award on Tuesday. The Young Investigator Award recognizes outstanding young ceramic engineers and scientists whose achievements have been significant to the profession and to the general welfare of the community around the globe. The tile of Shin’s presentation was “Thermal engineering using infrared photonic structures: probing coherent thermal emission in a single nano-object.”

Other student and young professional networking events included an industry panel for students and young professionals; Network with a Pro; the 2^nd Annual ICACC Trivia Networking Session; and an ACerS journal virtual workshop titled “Writing to be published, found, and read,” led by Ricardo Castro, professor at the University of California, Davis and editor of the International Journal of Ceramic Engineering & Science. The #ICACC22 social media contest was also offered for its fourth year.

ECD Jubilee Global Diversity Award

Each year, three early/mid-career women and minority professionals are selected for the ECD Jubilee Global Diversity Award. These awardees are invited to present at ICACC and are encouraged to mentor students and promote Society-related activities at their institutions.

This year’s recipients of the Jubilee Global Diversity Award were Cristina Balagna, assistant professor of materials science and technology at Politecnico di Torino, Italy; Zhaoju Yu, professor in the College of Materials at Xiamen University, China; and Tyrone Jones, advanced body armor consultant for Inventor, USA.

Their presentation titles were “Nanostructured antibacterial/virucidal composite coatings,” “Putting metals into polymer derived ceramics: What happens?” and “Critical insights on diversity within the US Army Research Laboratory in the 21^st century,” respectively.

NIST discussion panel

As part of the 6^th International Symposium on Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing Technologies symposium, Igor Levin and Andrew Allen of NIST organized a discussion panel on direct ink writing of ceramic materials. This special session continued a series of NIST-led discussion events on ceramics additive manufacturing that aim to identify measurement, standards, and data needs hindering the commercialization of ceramics additive manufacturing and facilitate collaborative efforts within the ceramics additive manufacturing community.

The international group of panelists included representatives from industrial companies developing ceramic additive manufacturing technologies, industrial end-users, government laboratories, ASTM/ISO, America Makes, and academia. The program consisted of brief presentations followed by an extensive discussion of critical aspects of ceramics direct ink writing. These aspects included feedstock morphology, process fundamentals, post-processing, defects, and properties of final products, with a focus on measurement, data, and standards requirements from both the technology developers and end-user perspectives.

Whereas developers expressed interest in the complex morphologies and rheological behavior of direct ink writing ceramic particle feedstock inks, the end-users prioritized performance integrity/reliability and defect inspection for the final products. The discussion concluded with the panelists agreeing on follow-up actions, such as exploring how to work together to curate public databases/phase diagrams for feedstocks (developers) and organizing an international round-robin to compare properties of direct ink writing-manufactured ceramics (end users).

Organizer appreciation session

Approximately 50 people encompassing ECD leadership, ICACC symposium organizers, and ACerS staff joined together on Wednesday, Jan. 26, to review ICACC 2022 and look forward to ICACC 2023.

During the session, Balaya provided statistics on the meeting and thanked the meeting organizers and ACerS staff for their support and efforts that resulted in a successful virtual meeting. Suematsu then thanked Balaya for his leadership as program chair and for his tireless efforts, not the least managing the pivot from a hybrid meeting to a full virtual meeting. Suematsu presented Balaya with a virtual certificate of appreciation as well as personal thank your messages from the ECD leadership on a job well done.

Following the review of this year’s conference, 2023 ICACC program chair Young-Wook Kim of the University of Seoul provided his vision for next year’s meeting.

The final item of business during the session was the presentation of the ECD Staff Appreciation Award. Since 2010, ECD has presented this award to recognize the significant contributions of ACerS staff toward the success of ICACC. This year’s recipients were Jonathon Foreman, managing editor of the ACerS journals, and Cathy O’Toole, customer service specialist.

Looking ahead to the 47^th ICACC meeting

Plan to join us next year for ICACC 2023 in Dayton Beach, Fla., Jan. 22–27, 2023. We look forward to seeing everyone in person!