Conference: 2023 Soft Condensed Matter Physics GRC and GRS: The Soft and Sustainable Building Blocks of Living and Active Systems

This award supports the 2023 Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Soft Condensed Matter: The Soft and Sustainable Building Blocks of Living and Active Systems taking place at Colby Sawyer College in central New Hampshire from August 13th through 18th, 2023. Specifically, this award will increase the number of junior researchers, graduate students, post doctoral fellows and underrepresented groups by offsetting the cost of travel and registration fees. This conference will continue its long tradition of assembling a highly interdisciplinary group of scientists to explore the broad range of topics under the umbrella of Soft Condensed Matter. The 2023 Soft Matter GRC program brings together topics that cross-cut methods and materials of interest to those rooted in condensed matter and biologically derived materials such as active gels, colloidal dispersions, membranes and applications of machine learning. Moreover, this conference will highlight the ever increasing role that soft matter science will play in developing a new circular economy for polymeric materials with an emphasis on the materials science and processing. In addition to broadening participation through the increased number of young and diverse participants, we will hold a GRC organized event that is specifically designed to broaden awareness and provide guidance to women and minorities who are participating in the conference. In addition, this award will partially support those attending the Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) which will bring together graduate students and post-doctoral fellows with a program designed to encourage the open exchange of ideas that is facilitated by peers and a small number of senior moderators. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.