The annual meeting of the Glass and Optical Materials Division wraps up today. The meeting brought together 308 scientists and engineers, including 90 students, from 21 countries. Foreign countries represented were Belgium, Brazil, Croatia, Finland, Germany, France, Italy, Serbia, India, China, Korea, Lichtenstein, Japan, Canada, UK, Spain, Russia, Czech Republic, Greece and Turkey.
Tuesday opened with the Morey Award lecture, which was delivered by Edgar Zanotto, a professor at the Federal University of São Carlos in Brazil. His talk, “Thirty-five Years of Glass Research—A tribute to my co-authors,” lived up to its billing. At turns gracious, funny, generous and always substantive, Zanotto reviewed his collaborations with coworkers in the US, UK and Brazil on understanding the structure of glasses, particularly silicate glasses. One of his conclusions was that more needs to be understood about the intermediate-range structure of glasses, which coincidentally, was also identified as one of the grand challenges in ceramic science by a recent NSF-funded workshop.
In contrast to Zanotto’s review of 35 years, the noontime Kreidl Award lecture was based on about 35 months of research by Mathieu Bauchy, a PhD student at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, France. The Kreidl Award recognizes outstanding research by graduate students in the fields of glass and optical materials. Bauchy, realizing that his topic, “Topological Constraints and Rigidity of Network Glasses from Molecular Dynamics Simulations,” is complex and specialized, spent a few minutes setting up the concepts, which gave all in the audience the ability to follow his work. He even brought a visual aid to demonstrate how constraints affect structure and provided the basis for following the rest of his talk. Like Zanotto, his talk was substantive, accessible and engaging. I expect we will hear much more from this accomplished young scientist in the future. The paper that earned the award was published in the May issue of the Bulletin.
On Tuesday evening attendees enjoyed a banquet, announcement of student poster contest award recipients and a few after-dinner remarks from Delbert Day (as part of the Festschrift activities in his honor). Day encouraged the students in the group to get involved in the Society and GOMD, saying, “Affiliating with the American Ceramic Society and the Glass Division was one of the best decisions of my career. I found a wonderful professional home in the Society and an outstanding community of glass researchers in the division.”
On Wednesday evening, the young professionals group organized an outing to a baseball game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the San Diego Padres (Cards won, 6-3). Coincidentally, the 2013 GOMD Annual Meeting will be in San Diego, where it will be colocated with the PACRIM 10 Conference on Ceramic and Glass Technology, June 2-7, 2013.
Here are a few more pictures from the event.
Edgar Zanotto highlighted 35 years of collaborative work in his George W. Morey Award lecture.
Mathieu Bauchy, PhD student from France, uses a stick model to explain how constraints affect glass structure during his lecture for the Norbert J. Kreidl Award for Young Scholars.
The conference welcomed attendees from 20 foreign countries, including these two gentlemen from Russia, who met for the first time at GOMD. More than 200 attended the conference banquet.
Mia Korngruen, Rowan University, received the award for best undergraduate poster from John Ballato (left) and Morton Smedskjaer.
Graduate students receiving awards for posters were Pinshan Huang (second from the left), first place, Cornell University; Binay Prasai, third place, Ohio University; and Brennan Walder, second place, Ohio State University. Presenting the awards were Morton Smedskjaer (far left) and John Ballato (far right).
A mirthful Delbert Day claimed that a covert goal of his research has been to develop talking microspheres, a goal fully realized when this microsphere, "Mildred," exclaimed "Hooray!" Day went on to highlight the more serious goals of his microsphere research for bone scaffolding, drug delivery, blood typing and more. Hooray, indeed!
Some former students with Day and his current student, Ali Mohammadkhah (far left). As Day's fourth "last student," few expect that Mohammadkhah will be Day's actual last student.
The Young Professionals group organized an outing to Busch Stadium to watch the St. Louis Cardinals host the San Diego Padres. They graciously extended the invitation to young-at-heart professionals, too.