NSF Student Travel Grant for the 2025 Foundations of Nanoscience Conference (FNANO)

The Conference on Foundations of Nanoscience meeting (FNANO) is an annual conference focusing on key topics in nanoscience including experimental and theoretical studies of self-assembled architectures and devices, at scales ranging from nano-scale to meso-scale. The conference spans traditional disciplines including chemistry, biochemistry, materials, physics, computer science, mathematics, and various engineering disciplines. This award will provide travel support to 25 students and postdoctoral fellows from US institutions to attend the twenty second annual conference on Foundations of Nanoscience (FNANO25), including students and fellows from historically underrepresented groups. Cross-disciplinary interactions are crucial for the advancement of nanoscience, but often work that is published in one area is not readily accessible to researchers in another area. FNANO was established as a venue for fostering such interactions between individual researchers interested in various aspects of self-assembly. By bringing top researchers in self-assembling nanostructures together in a stimulating environment, with an emphasis on breaking results and discussion, the conference helps researchers communicate new ideas and techniques swiftly and form research collaborations. The support from NSF will significantly enhance interdisciplinary basic research in the area of nanoscience and allow researchers to initiate and maintain cross-discipline collaborations. It will encourage trainees to attend the conference and interact with active and leading researchers in the field of nanoscience and nanotechnology. 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.