Conference: Western States Section of the Combustion Institute Spring Meeting 2022

The objective of this award is to provide support for the 2022 Spring Technical Meeting of the Western States Section of the Combustion Institute, which will be hosted by Stanford University March 21-22, 2022. The broader significance and importance of this meeting is providing a forum for graduate students, postdoctoral students, faculty and other researchers to network and share progress in this area of research.

This conference is a gathering of combustion researchers in academia, industry, and government from the West Coast and Mountain regions of the United States. The conference's technical program consists of a series of plenary lectures, contributed oral presentations, and informal gatherings. The funding from NSF will be used to support students who attend the meeting.

The combustion institute is the premier academic organization organizing this conference. The conference facilitates the exchange of combustion research results through plenary lectures and oral presentations. Unlike the International and National meetings, the paper deadline is only a few weeks before the conference, allowing participants to showcase brand new results.

The fact that the required paper is not a formal publication also allows participants to present work in progress. Both of these factors enhance the information exchange at the conference.

The conference brings together leading experts to give plenary talks in several areas. Sessions will include the topic areas of Computationally and Data Intensive Research, Detonations and Supersonic Combustion, Diagnostics, Fire Research, Heterogeneous Combustion/Spray and Droplets, IC Engines, Gas Turbines, and Rockets, Laminar Flames, Novel Energy Conversion Techniques, Reaction Kinetics and Fuels, Soot and Nanomaterials, Turbulent Flames.

A particular focus of this conference is on graduate and undergraduate students: providing an opportunity for these students to present and get feedback on their research and enhancing their oral presentation and technical writing skills. The support from NSF will be used to award travel grants to non-local students and registration support for local students in an effort to increase student participation at the meeting, particularly students from underrepresented institutions that may not have the financial means to fully support student travel to conferences.

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.