- Faraday Discussion Graduate Research Seminar

Faraday Discussion Graduate Research Seminar, FD-GRS
April 9-11, 2010

VCU, School of Engineering - West Hall, 601 West Main Street

Friday, April 9th, 2010

6:00-7:00pm Students Registration (Lobby)
7:00-8:00 pm Welcoming Reception/Dinner Buffet (Lobby)
8:00-10:00pm First Poster Session (Lobby)

8:00-8:45am Breakfast (Lobby)
8:45am Introductory Remarks: Alenka Luzar (Classroom West 106)

9:00am Ben Widom - Theory of Liquids and Interfaces
10:30am-10:45am Coffee Break
10:45am-12:15pm Julia Yeomans - Coarse-Grained Modeling of Dynamic Transitions
12:30 - 13:30pm Lunch (Lobby)
Saturday Lecture Session II- Chair: Kenneth Wynne
2:00-3:30pm Bob Evans - Heterogeneous Surfaces, Theory
3:30 - 3:45pm Coffee Break
3:45 - 5:15pm Jacob Klein - Heterogeneous Surfaces, Experiment
5:15 - 6:45pm David Quere - Superhydrohobic Surfaces
7:00-8:00 pm Dinner (Lobby)
8:00-10:00pm Second Poster Session (Lobby)

8:00-9:00am Breakfast (Lobby)
Sunday Lecture Session - Chair: Alenka Luzar
Student Oral Presentations (20 min presentation plus 10 min for questions)
9:00- 9:30am Jonathan B. Boreyko - Restoring superhydrophobictiy of lotus leaves with
vibration-induced dewetting
9:30-10:00am Anindarupa Chunder - Wetting dynamics of the nanostructured materials and their applications
10:00-10:30am Sean McBride - An improved determination of the spring constant and
slip length using large colloidal probe atomic force microscopy
10:30-10:45am Coffee Break
10:45-11:15am Lidiya Mischenko - Temperature induced dynamic pinning on structured
superhydrophobic surfaces
11:15-11:45am Robin Underwood - Oil drop hydration and coalescence
11:45am-12:15pm Davide Vanzo - Computer simulation of a nematic nanodroplet
wetting a flat surface
12:15pm Closing Remarks: Alenka Luzar

Faraday Discussion Graduate Research Seminar on Wetting at Structured Surfaces,
April 9-11, 2010

The interdisciplinary research field of the meeting covered chemical, physical, materials and engineering aspects of interface science. The goal of the FD-GRS was to encourage social and intellectual interactions among the youngest scientists representing the many facets of research in the field. The seminar was open to all graduate students and 43 students from the United States, UK, Italy, Israel, Australia, Spain and Austria were selected to participate.

The weekend program consisted of introductory lectures and guided discussion by five distinguished academic mentors, together with poster presentations and selected oral contributions from students. Financial support from the U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy and American Chemical Society provided fellowships for U.S. participants. The students' responses demonstrated that they felt better prepared and less intimidated to engage in the unique Faraday Discussion format of critical and public dissection of papers.

Learn more about the scope and organization

Group photo of students and mentors after the completion of the FD-GRS taken during an outing to Maymont Park.

Some FD-GRS students skipped the group photo and were having fun forming the human Cassie state (nobody wanted to make the sacrifice to make the Wenzel state). Image courtesy of Sean McBride, graduate student from Kansas State University.

Click photo for full size version.

Watch video clips from the event: