SEARCH · Engineering Papers
Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.
Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.
An overview of the symposium on “Methods in Quantum Chemistry” held to honor the life and work of Jiří Čížek and Josef Paldus is presented.
No abstract prepared.
The International Symposium on Clusters and Nanomaterials was held in Richmond, Virginia during October 26-29, 2015. The symposium focused on the roles clusters and nanostructures play in solving outstanding problems in clean and sustainable energy and life sciences applications; two of the most important issues facing science and society. Many of the materials issues in renewable energies, environmental impacts of energy technologies as well as beneficial and toxicity issues of nanoparticles in health are intertwined. Realizing that both fundamental and applied materials issues require a multidisciplinary approach the symposium provided a forum by bringing researchers from physics, chemistry, materials science, and engineering fields to share their ideas and results, identify outstanding problems, and develop new collaborations. Clean and sustainable energy sessions addressed challenges in production, storage, conversion, and efficiency of renewable energies such as solar, wind, bio, thermo-electric, and hydrogen. Environmental issues dealt with air- and water-pollution and conservation, environmental remediation and hydrocarbon processing. Topics in life sciences included therapeutic and diagnostic methods as well as health hazards attributed to nanoparticles. Cross-cutting topics such as reactions, catalysis, electronic, optical, and magnetic properties were also covered. The symposium attracted 132 participants from 24 countries in the world. It featured 39 invited speakers in 14 plenary sessions, in addition to one key-note session. Eighty-five contributed papers were presented in two poster sessions and 14 papers from this list were selected to be presented orally at the end of each session to highlight hot topics. Papers presented at the symposium were reviewed and published in SPIE so that these can reach a wide audience. The symposium was highly interactive with ample time allotted for discussions and making new collaborations. The participants’ response was that this was a high quality conference and covered topics at the cutting edge of science and technology. The symposium was endorsed by the American Physical Society, The Materials Research Society, SPIE, The Metallurgical Society, and the American Vacuum Society. The symposium was supported by external grants from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy as well as by internal grants from Virginia Commonwealth University (Offices of the President, Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs, Vice President of Research, Vice Provost for Life Sciences, Dean of the College of Humanities and Sciences, and the Dean of the School of Engineering). The funding from DOE was used to support partial expenses of invited speakers, students and postdoctoral fellows.
The TOUGH Symposium 2015 was held in Berkeley, California, September 28-30, 2015. The TOUGH family of codes, developed at the Energy Geosciences Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), is a suite of computer programs for the simulation of multiphase and multicomponent fluid and heat flows in porous and fractured media with applications in many geosciences fields, such as geothermal reservoir engineering, nuclear waste disposal, geological carbon sequestration, oil and gas reservoirs, gas hydrate research, vadose zone hydrology and environmental remediation. Since the first release in the 1980s, many modifications and enhancements have been continuously made to TOUGH and its various descendants (iTOUGH2, TOUGH+, TOUGH-MP, TOUGHREACT, TOUGH+HYDRATE, TMVOC...), at LBNL and elsewhere. Today, these codes are used worldwide in academia, government organizations and private companies in problems involving coupled hydrological, thermal, biogeochemical and geomechanical processes. The Symposia, organized every 2-3 years, bring together developers and users for an open exchange on recent code enhancements and applications. In 2015, the Symposium was attended by one hundred participants, representing thirty-four nationalities. This Special Issue in Computers & Geosciences gathers extended versions of selected Symposium proceedings related to (i) recent enhancements to the TOUGH family of codes and (ii) coupled flow and geomechanics processes modeling. In this special issue, a paper by Jung et al. provides a new base version of TOUGH, TOUGH3. This latest version addresses the computational robustness and efficiency needed for the increasing complexity of the simulated processes and the growing size of model domains. Moreover, it consolidates the serial and parallel versions into a single code, hence, inconsistencies between different versions are less likely to occur, and code maintenance and development become more efficient. Finsterle et al. present a review of the capabilities of iTOUGH2 and illustrate the workflow of an integrated simulation-optimization framework. Liu et al. present an approach to reduce the computational cost of performing Bayesian inverse modeling and demonstrate their approach using a synthetic experiment simulated with TOUGH2. Regarding the mesh generation process, the paper by Doughty presents a generalization of the grid-generation algorithm embedded in TOUGH2 (MESHMAKER) to create one-column grids with fractal dimension, useful for representing flow through fractures or highly heterogeneous media with fractal geometry, and also for inverse methods. Sentís and Gable present a module to interface the open source code Lagrit with TOUGH2, that assists in the processes of mesh generation and model setup, and that can be particularly useful for complex geometries and large models. Bonduà et al. present a pre-processing tool (VORO2MESH) that features a full 3D Voronoi approach for structured and unstructured grids, and an enhanced post-processor (TOUGH2Viewer) for the visualization of 3D Voronoi grids. The literature review shows that coupled fluid flow and geomechanics has gained increasing attention in the last years in many geosciences fields. In this context, several codes of the TOUGH family have been successfully coupled with geomechanics software. The paper by Rutqvist presents a review of some of these TOUGH-based geomechanics models, of which the TOUGH-FLAC simulator – presented for the first time in the TOUGH Symposium 2003 – is well-known worldwide and has been used in a large variety of applications, encompassing the application domains of the TOUGH codes. Blanco-Martín et al. present an extension of TOUGH-FLAC to the finite strain framework, motivated by the existence of large strains associated with rock salt deformation in the context of heat-generating nuclear waste disposal. Following a paper published in the Special Issue of the TOUGH Symposium 2012 in this journal, Kim et al. present the current status of the TOUGH-RSBN simulator for coupled hydro-mechanical modeling of hydraulic fracturing using a discrete fracture network approach, and present some validation and demonstration cases. Rinaldi and Nespoli present TOUGH-SEED, an injection-induced seismicity modeling approach using TOUGH2 and a geomechanics stochastic model, and apply it to the Basel EGS project. Finally, Rinaldi et al. use the PEST protocol implemented in iTOUGH2, combined with TOUGH-FLAC as the forward model, to perform inverse modeling for the In Salah CO2 demonstration site in Algeria. Using pore pressures and InSAR displacements as observations, this approach allows for a multi-physics joint inversion and takes advantage of the inverse capabilities of iTOUGH2 (parameter estimation, sensitivity analysis, uncertainty estimation …), applied to coupled fluid flow and geomechanics. On behalf of the members of the TOUGH Symposium 2015 Organizing Committee, I hope that this collection of papers will provide the readers of Computers & Geosciences with a recent view of the capabilities of the TOUGH family of codes, as well as with current modeling research domains in the geosciences. Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to all the reviewers who kindly contributed to this Special Issue, as well as the Journal staff who have made this publication possible.
A named symposium to honor Dr. Mario J. Molina was held 10–14 January 2016, as part of the 96th American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. Dr. Molina first demonstrated that industrially produced chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) decompose in the stratosphere and release chlorine atoms, leading to catalytic ozone destruction. His research in stratospheric chemistry was instrumental to the establishment of the 1987 United Nations Montreal Protocol to ban ozone-depleting substances worldwide. Dr. Molina’s contributions to preserving the planet Earth not only save the atmospheric ozone layer, but also protect the climate by reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases. He was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his pioneering research in understanding the stratospheric ozone loss mechanism. In 2013, President Barack Obama announced Dr. Molina as a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The 2016 AMS Molina Symposium honored Dr. Molina’s distinguished contributions to research related to atmospheric chemistry. The symposium contained an integrated theme related to atmospheric chemistry, climate, and policy. Dr. Molina delivered a keynote speech at the Symposium. The conference included invited keynote speeches and invited and contributed oral and poster sessions, and a banquet was held on Tuesday January 12, 2016. The symposium covered all aspects of atmospheric chemistry, with topics including (1) Stratospheric chemistry, (2) Tropospheric chemistry, (3) Aerosol nucleation, growth, and transformation, (4) Aerosol properties, (5) Megacity air pollution, and (6) Atmospheric chemistry laboratory, field, and modeling studies. This DOE project supported 14 scientists, including graduate students, post docs, junior research scientists, and non-tenured assistant professors to attend this symposium.
The Complex Carbohydrate Research Center (CCRC) of the University of Georgia holds a symposium yearly that highlights a broad range of carbohydrate research topics. The 8th Annual Georgia Glycoscience Symposium entitled “Integrating Models of Plant Cell Wall Structure, Biosynthesis and Assembly” was held on April 7, 2014 at the CCRC. The focus of symposium was on the role of glycans in plant cell wall structure and synthesis. The goal was to have world leaders in conjunction with graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and research scientists to propose the newest plant cell wall models. The symposium program closely followed the DOE’s mission and was specifically designed to highlight chemical and biochemical structures and processes important for the formation and modification of renewable plant cell walls which serve as the basis for biomaterial and biofuels. The symposium was attended by both senior investigators in the field as well as students including a total attendance of 103, which included 80 faculty/research scientists, 11 graduate students and 12 Postdoctoral students.
The International Symposium on Liquid Metals Applications for Fusion (ISLA) aims to assemble scientists and engineers engaged in research on lithium and liquid metal applications for fusion devices, facilitating discussions on recent advancements and challenges in an open forum to support the development of viable fusion reactors. The 8th International Symposium on Liquid Metals Applications for Fusion (ISLA-8) was organized by the Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, from 8 to 12 September 2024, in Hefei, China. The symposium was attended by over 70 participants, marking one of the highest attendance figures in the series. A total of 68 presentations were delivered, including 59 presented on-site, while the remainder were conducted online. The participants represented 10 countries, namely China, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, the USA, the Czech Republic, Italy, Thailand, Spain, and Germany. The symposium covered 10 topics, structured into 13 sessions. Additionally, an opening session provided an overview of the current symposium, while a closing session summarized reports from each session chair.
The 56 th Sanibel Symposium was held February 14-19 2016 at the King and Prince Hotel, St. Simons Island, GA. It successfully brought quantum chemists and chemical and condensed matter physicists together in presentations, posters, and informal discussions bridging those two communities. The Symposium has had a significant role in preparing generations of quantum theorists. As computational potency and algorithmic sophistication have grown, the Symposium has evolved to emphasize more heavily computationally oriented method development in chemistry and materials physics, including nanoscience, complex molecular phenomena, and even bio-molecular methods and problems. Given this context, the 56 th Sanibel meeting systematically and deliberately had sessions focused on exascale computation. A selection of outstanding theoretical problems that need serious attention was included. Five invited sessions, two contributed sessions (hot topics), and a poster session were organized with the exascale theme. This was a historic milestone in the evolution of the Symposia. Just as years ago linear algebra, perturbation theory, density matrices, and band-structure methods dominated early Sanibel Symposia, the exascale sessions of the 56 th meeting contributed a transformative influence to add structure and strength to the computational physical science community in an unprecedented way. A copy of the full program of the 56 th Symposium is attached. The exascale sessions were Linear Scaling, Non-Adabatic Dynamics, Interpretive Theory and Models, Computation, Software, and Algorithms, and Quantum Monte Carlo. The Symposium Proceedings will be published in Molecular Physics (2017). Note that the Sanibel proceedings from 2015 and 2014 were published as Molecular Physics vol. 114, issue 3-4 (2016) and vol. 113, issue 3-4 (2015) respectively.
The Microbial Dark Matter Symposium held on August 28–29, 2025, in Laguna Beach, Orange County, CA, convened a multidisciplinary group of scientists to address the vast unknowns in microbial life—from uncultured taxa and uncharacterized proteins to elusive viruses and spacefaring microbes. Set against a scenic coastal backdrop, the symposium highlighted advances in single-cell genomics, proximity ligation sequencing, and artificial intelligence-ready bioinformatics, while also probing the limits of microbial persistence, metabolism, and ecological distribution. Sessions explored microbial dark matter from multiple dimensions: cultivability, where new strategies are enabling recovery of elusive microbes; functional ambiguity, where metagenomic dark zones are illuminated by computational annotation; and genomic representation, where single-cell methods bridge gaps left by shotgun community sequencing. Researchers shared breakthroughs in identifying atmospheric microbiomes, “dark oxygen” production in groundwater ecosystems, and microbial survival on the International Space Station. The symposium emphasized integration of methods, disciplines, and ecosystems, advancing a collective push to illuminate the microbial dark matter on Earth and beyond. By highlighting emerging tools, pressing questions, and cross-domain insights, the symposium underscored the need for collaborative, open, and adaptive approaches to study the microbial unknown. The meeting marks a pivotal moment in microbiology, where cultivating knowledge of the uncultivated promises transformative understanding of life, everywhere.
The International Symposium in Opportunities in Underground Physics (ISOUP) was held in Asilomar, CA during May 24-27, 2013. The Symposium brought together scientists from the US and abroad for an open discussion on science opportunities provided by the possibility of a new generation of large underground detectors associated with long baseline neutrino beams. The Symposium was highly successful. The main focus of the Symposium was the science goals that could be achieved by placing such a detector deep underground.
The SAE 2016 Range Extenders for Electric Vehicles Symposium was a 2-day technical meeting focused on the role of advanced internal combustion engines (ICEs) and other novel energy converter technologies for extending the range of electric vehicles (EVs). The first-of-its-kind symposium was notable for focusing solely on the range extender (REx) technologies and not the EVs. The technical program featured presentations from international leaders from industry, government, national laboratories, and academia. The opening keynote presentations covered a broad range of topics including consumer behavior, policy implications, regulatory considerations, and REx architectures as enablers for advanced technologies. The technical sessions focused on an array of REx technologies including conventional ICEs, as well as less conventional or emerging technologies such as microturbines, fuel cells, low-temperature combustion engines, and aluminum-air batteries. The symposium included two panel sessions. The trend toward increasing vehicle electrification and the changing role of ICEs and other auxiliary power unit technologies for use as REx’s is leading to new research and design development needs. The symposium captured the interest of the industry and research communities in exploring the opportunities and challenges associated with REx’s for EVs. This report includes key takeaways, summarized below, and draft notes for each presentation and panel discussion.
The University of Missouri’s Interdisciplinary Plant Group held its 38th annual symposium on May 25–27. In short, it was a resounding success! The air was almost electric because of a confluence of events that were particular to this symposium. Not only was there great enthusiasm from students attending their first ever scientific meeting, but this was coupled with excitement and delight exuded by many of our senior invited speakers, who were attending their first in-person meeting since the Covid pandemic began. After a long planning period, and with the ongoing pandemic injecting uncertainty, it was gratifying to see the symposium unfold with such excitement and engagement among participants. The symposium was organized to address the grand challenge of “Enhancing the Resilience of Plant System to Climate Change”, by bringing together experts at the intersections of multiple disciplines to educate our community on the opportunities to develop innovative mitigation strategies and to adapt plants to climate change.
An international group of researchers gathered for the “Symposium on Advancements in Simulating Neutron Scattering Instruments and Experiments” at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) on October 29- 30, 2024. The symposium highlighted state-of-the-art advancements in neutron scattering instrument simulations and the development of digital twins for scattering instruments. This document summarizes the recurring themes from the 19 talks and discussions. A key focus was on the role of neutronics simulations in the design, analysis, and performance optimization of neutron instruments. Presentations featured the most widely used software packages, such as McStas, McVine, Vitess, and MCNP. Another major theme addressed the analysis and interpretation of experimental neutron data, where materials models and simulations play a critical role. Talks on relevant software tools, including NCrystal, OCLimax, and Paradyse, were delivered by their respective developers. During the symposium, both talks and breakout sessions explored strategies to enhance the interplay between neutronics simulations and materials models. A key question emerged: How can we develop a RealTime Explainable Digital Twin of a neutron scattering experiment? Discussions include the idea that the Digital Twin concept has implications for instrument control and testing. Through this symposium, we gained valuable insights into the challenges and requirements for developing a Real-Time Explainable Digital Twin of a neutron scattering experiment. The discussions and presentations paved the way for future innovations in this rapidly advancing field.
For 38 years, the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy has been the premier forum for presenting computer security and electronic privacy developments and for bringing together leading researchers and practitioners. We invited authors to submit revised versions of their symposium papers, recast as articles suitable for publication in IEEE Security & Privacy magazine. Specifically, we asked the original authors to revise their papers to speak to the magazine's audience, which goes beyond the symposium's traditional academically focused audience to also include policymakers and practitioners.
The Sanibel Symposium 2014 was held February 16-21, 2014, at the King and Prince, St. Simons Island, GA. It was successful in bringing condensed-matter physicists and quantum chemists together productively to drive the emergence of those specialties. The Symposium had a significant role in preparing a whole generation of quantum theorists. The 54th Sanibel meeting looked to the future in two ways. We had 360⁰-View sessions to honor the exceptional contributions of Rodney Bartlett (70), Bill Butler (70), Yngve Öhrn (80), Fritz Schaefer (70), and Malcolm Stocks (70). The work of these five has greatly impacted several generations of quantum chemists and condensed matter physicists. The “360⁰” is the sum of their ages. More significantly, it symbolizes a panoramic view of critical developments and accomplishments in theoretical and computational chemistry and physics oriented toward the future. Thus, two of the eight 360⁰-View sessions focused specifically on younger scientists. The 360⁰-View program was the major component of the 2014 Sanibel meeting. Another four sessions included a sub-symposium on ab initio Simulations at Extreme Conditions, with focus on getting past the barriers of present-day Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics by advances in finite-temperature density functional theory, orbital-free DFT, and new all-numerical approaches.
This paper reports the output of a consensus symposium organized by the International Union of Radioecology in November 2015. The symposium gathered an academically diverse group of 30 scientists to consider the still debated ecological impact of radiation on populations and ecosystems. Stimulated by the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters' accidental contamination of the environment, there is increasing interest in developing environmental radiation protection frameworks. Scientific research conducted in a variety of laboratory and field settings has improved our knowledge of the effects of ionizing radiation on the environment. However, the results from such studies sometimes appear contradictory and there is disagreement about the implications for risk assessment. The Symposium discussions therefore focused on issues that might lead to different interpretations of the results, such as laboratory versus field approaches, organism versus population and ecosystemic inference strategies, dose estimation approaches and their significance under chronic exposure conditions. The participating scientists, from across the spectrum of disciplines and research areas, extending also beyond the traditional radioecology community, successfully developed a constructive spirit directed at understanding discrepancies. From the discussions, the group has derived seven consensus statements related to environmental protection against radiation, which are supplemented with some recommendations. Each of these statements is contextualized and discussed in view of contributing to the orientation and integration of future research, the results of which should yield better consensus on the ecological impact of radiation and consolidate suitable approaches for efficient radiological protection of the environment.
This abstract will not blow you away, but speed-painting presenter Erik Wahl will certainly make a truly unique AAPM symposium that you will not want to miss. Along with clinical director John Bayouth and scientific leader Jeff Siewerdsen, this session will highlight innovation. To avoid being button pushers and irrelevant investigators of yesterday’s science, we must innovate. This is particularly challenging in the changing landscape of declining research funding and healthcare reimbursement. But all hope is not lost, Medical Physics is a field born out of innovation. As scientists we quickly translated the man-made and natural phenomena of radiation into a tool that could diagnose broken bones, locate foreign objects imbedded within the body, and treat a spectrum of diseases. As hyperbolae surrounding the curative powers of radiation overcame society, physicists continued their systematic pursuit of a fundamental understanding of radiation and applied their knowledge to enable the diagnostic and therapeutic power of this new tool. Health economics and the decline in research funding have put the Medical Physicist in a precarious position: how do we optimally participate in medical research and advanced patient care in the face of many competing needs? Today's diagnostic imaging and therapeutic approaches are tremendously sophisticated. Researchers and commercial vendors are producing technologies at a remarkable rate; to enable their safe and effective implementation Medical Physicists must work from a fundamental understanding of these technologies. This requires all of us, clinically practicing Medical Physicists, Researchers and Educators alike, to combine our training in scientific methods with innovation. Innovation is the key to our past, a necessity for our contemporary challenges, and critical for the future of Medical Physics. The keynote speakers for the 2014 AAPM Presidential Symposium session will address the way we approach these vitally important technologies for diagnosis and therapy into opportunities to innovate. The speed-painting artist and lecturer Erik Wahl will finish the symposium with a fast-paced and entertaining presentation on embracing the future by creating disruptive innovation strategies. Learning Objectives: Identify connection between Medical Physics and Innovation. Understand how Innovation enables Clinical Medical Physicists to implement novel technologies. Learn how innovative Medical Physics solutions can address significant and relevant challenges in science. Become inspired to pursue a new scientific understanding, positive change in clinical practice, and benefit to patients.
Diagnostic radiology and radiation oncology are arguably two of the most technologically advanced specialties in medicine. The imaging and radiation medicine technologies in clinical use today have been continuously improved through new advances made in the commercial and academic research arenas. This symposium explores the translational path from research through clinical implementation. Dr. Pettigrew will start this discussion by sharing his perspectives as director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB). The NIBIB has focused on promoting research that is technological in nature and has high clinical impact. We are in the age of precision medicine, and the technological innovations and quantitative tools developed by engineers and physicists working with physicians are providing innovative tools that increase precision and improve outcomes in health care. NIBIB funded grants lead to a very high patenting rate (per grant dollar), and these patents have higher citation rates by other patents, suggesting greater clinical impact, as well. Two examples of clinical translation resulting from NIH-funded research will be presented, in radiation therapy and diagnostic imaging. Dr. Yu will describe a stereotactic radiotherapy device developed in his laboratory that is designed for treating breast cancer with the patient in the prone position. It uses 36 rotating Cobalt-60 sources positioned in an annular geometry to focus the radiation beam at the system’s isocenter. The radiation dose is delivered throughout the target volume in the breast by constantly moving the patient in a planned trajectory relative to the fixed isocenter. With this technique, the focal spot dynamically paints the dose distribution throughout the target volume in three dimensions. Dr. Jackson will conclude this symposium by describing the RSNA Quantitative Imaging Biomarkers Alliance (QIBA), which is funded in part by NIBIB and is a synergistic collaboration between medical physicists, radiologists, oncologists, industry representatives, and other stakeholders. The mission of QIBA is to improve the accuracy and practicality of quantitative image-based biomarkers by increasing precision across devices, patients, and time, an essential step in incorporating quantitative imaging biomarkers into radiology practice. Validated quantitative imaging biomarkers are necessary to support precision medicine initiatives, multimodality / multiparametric applications in medicine, treatment planning and response assessment, and radiogenomics applications. Current applications in the QIBA portfolio extend to cancer diagnosis and treatment, pulmonary diseases, and neurological disorders. The overall goal of this symposium is to illustrate the bidirectional exchange between medical research and clinical practice. Revitalizing scientific excellence in clinical medical physics challenges practitioners to identify clinical limitations, which then drive research innovation; research funded by the NIH and other agencies develops technological solutions to these limitations, which are translated to the care environment to ultimately improve clinical practice in radiology and radiation oncology.