Call for Abstract: Symposium XX: Bridging Scales in Heterogeneous Materials at 2014 MRS Fall Meeting & Exhibit (Nov 30 - Dec 5)

Dear colleagues,

You are cordially invited to submit an abstract to Symposium XX: Bridging Scales in Heterogeneous Materials at the 2014 MRS Fall Meeting & Exhibit, to be held
November 30 - December 5, 2014, in Boston, Massachusetts.

Materials with heterogeneous structures may have unusual responses and enhanced mechanical properties that can revolutionize our materials inventory. The complexity of interactions arising from different length and time scales in heterogeneous materials has led to novel efforts in multi-scale material design. This symposium focuses on fundamental issues of coupled and multi-scale phenomena in heterogeneous materials operating at the intersection of materials science and mechanics. Contributions in the area of nanostructured materials, hierarchical structures and multi-scale modeling and experiments are particularly welcome. Special emphasis is placed on the discovery of unusual physics and new mechanics principles, establishment of structure-property relationships, and innovative experimental and modeling techniques at relevant length and time scales. This symposium will bring together a diverse group of material scientists and mechanicians for a technical exchange and a discussion of the challenging issues driving research in this field.

Topics will include:
• Nanostructured/hierarchically structured materials
• Novel mechanics and material physics
• Multi-scale experimental and simulation techniques for microstructure characterization

Invited speakers include:
Horacio D. Espinosa (Northwestern Univ.), Huajian Gao (Brown Univ.), Xiaosheng Gao (Univ. of Akron), Julia Greer (California Inst. of Technology), Lou Hector (GM Research and Development), David McDowell (Georgia Inst. of Technology), Amit Misra (Los Alamos National Lab), George Pharr (Univ. of Tennessee), Ajit Roy (Air Force Research Lab), Zhigang Suo (Harvard Univ.).

Joint sessions are being considered with Symposium RR: Scaling Effects in Plasticity─Synergy between Simulations and Experiments.

To submit an abstract, please visit the conference website at http://www.mrs.org/fall2014/. The deadline for abstract submission is June 19, 2014, 11:59 p.m. (ET).

Symposium Organizers:
Huck Beng Chew
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Dept. of Aerospace Engineering
Tel 217-333-9770, hbchew@illinois.edu

Shuman Xia
Georgia Institute of Technology
School of Mechanical Engineering
shuman.xia@me.gatech.edu

Pablo Zavattieri
Purdue University
School of Civil Engineering
Tel 765-496-9644, zavattie@purdue.edu

Yanfei Gao
University of Tennessee at Knoxville
Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering
Tel 865-974-2350, ygao7@utk.edu