Participant Support for 2024 Gordon Research Conference on Additive Manufacturing of Soft Materials, Smithfield, Rhode Island; 11-16 August 2024

This award provides participant support for a broad group of researchers to attend the 2024 Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Additive Manufacturing of Soft Materials, Smithfield, Rhode Island; 11-16 August 2024. Additive manufacturing (AM), commonly termed 3D printing, represents a new direction in the fabrication of functional structures with precise geometric shapes.

The conference will focus on the design of next-generation materials with functionality that is suitable for diverse AM printing techniques together with physical property measurements, and design of new printing operations. The conference will weave a thread of sustainability, recycling, and circularity into the program to expose the audience to the importance of end-of-life considerations when designing next-generation materials.

This award would help expose new researchers to the field of additive manufacturing, nurture networking among scientists and engineers at all levels, and catalyze new convergence of disciplines. This conference provides professional development opportunities for graduate students and early career researchers to present the results of their research and interact with a larger network of professionals with specific priority given to women, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and/or early career investigators from underrepresented minority groups, and persons with disabilities.

This conference brings together established leaders and early career stage professionals in fields relevant to Additive Manufacturing of soft materials. This conference provides a forum for the presentation and discussion of results related to next-generation soft materials for future additive manufacturing modalities. Topics covered in this conference range from digital design, multiscale simulations, artificial intelligence and machine learning, multimodality manufacturing methods, materials synthesis, multi-material printing, composites, and performance engineering will have broad impact on the field.

Attendees will include researchers from sustainability scientists and manufacturing engineers to entrepreneurs, designers, artists, and educators. Particular attention will be devoted to the introduction of photo-reactivity for light-based AM printing platforms together with photo-rheological measurements to predict printability. Recent efforts in machine learning, computational modeling, and artificial intelligence will guide topology optimization.

The conference will speak to the importance of dematerialization and mono-materialization, which represent two critical pathways for sustainable material discovery.

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.