A typical plenary session at Fourth International Congress on Ceramics, which just concluded in Chicago. Credit: ACerS.
To wrap up our coverage of the Fourth International Congress on Ceramics, we offer this mini-album of some of the highlights of ICC4 and the Ceramics Leadership Summit (including the opening ceremonies and presentation of the new leaders of the congress and the International Ceramic Federation), the welcome reception, corporate and technical presentations, business panels and exhibition and poster sessions. We’ve also included some informal shots of between-the-sessions gatherings where old acquaintances were found, new collaborations planned and presenters were often peppered with follow-up questions.
ACerS President George Wicks welcomes the audience at the start of ICC4. Credit: ACerS.
As part of the opening ceremonies, International Ceramics Federation President Gary Messing symbolically passed leadership of the ICF to Ce-Wen Nan. Credit: ACerS.
Likewise, ICC4 President Katherine Faber prepares to pass the leadership of the congress to a representative of Longtu Li, who will serve as ICC5 president and organize preparations for the 2014 meeting.
Maxine Savitz, vice president of the National Academy of Engineering and leadoff plenary speaker chats with ACerS President Wicks. Credit: ACerS.
Top and above, the ICC4 reception provided a chance for international delegations to mingle and share their experiences. Credit: ACerS.
Wicks and ACerS Executive Director Charlie Spahr (second from right) received a gift from representatives of the Chinese Ceramic Society. Credit: ACerS.
Plenary speaker Athanasios Konstandopoulos, a professor of chemical engineering at Greece’s Aristotle University, discussed multifunctional ceramic reactors. Credit: ACerS.
Question and answer periods following the plenary talks provided an opportunity to delve deeper into the presentations. Credit: ACerS.
Both the interactive and traditional poster sessions stimulated lively discussions of research results. Credit: ACerS.
Top and above, the Expo that held as part of the ICC4 events allowed businesses and institutions to connect with researchers and manufacturers. Credit: ACerS.
Morgan Crucible’s Michael Murray, second from left, was greeted by friends and colleagues after finishing his plenary talk on emerging ceramic technologies. Credit: ACerS.
As part of the combined concurrent Ceramics Leadership Summit track, Penn State’s John Hellmann presented a case study involving technology transfer and entrepreneurship regarding the use of ceramic materials for oil and gas recovery. Credit: ACerS.
Yukio Sakabe, senior vice president of Murata Manufacturing, offered a vision of the applications and markets for electroceramics. Credit: ACerS.
As part of the Security and Strategic Materials sessions, Hideo Hosono, from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, presented groundbreaking research on the creation of cage-like structures in calcium aluminate that trap electrons, effectively changing the insulator into a semiconductor or even a metal-like conductor. Credit: ACerS.
Top and above, before the conference dinner held at the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, attendees got to hear from AIC researchers about how they employ materials science tools to investigate how many of the artworks were made. Credit: ACerS.
Dinner at the Art Institute let attendees celebrate their friendships and a successful conference. Credit: ACerS.
As part of the ICC4 dinner, George Wicks presented a framed ICC medallion to Katherine Faber as a token of thanks for her organizational efforts on behalf of ICC4. Credit: ACerS.
Faber stood on a glass staircase above the atrium of the Modern Wing of the AIC to thank attendees, below, for the participation in the ICC4 and Ceramic Leadership Summit events. Credit: ACerS.
On the closing day, Carnegie Mellon Professor Gregory Rohrer sent off attendees with ample food for thought when he presented the findings of an NSF-supported effort to identify the update and expand on a list of “grand challenges” for ceramic science. Credit: ACerS.