Sixth International Workshop on Modeling in Crystal Growth (IWMCG-6) to be held in Lake Geneva, WI, August 9-13, 2009

0939445

Derby

The Sixth International Workshop on Modeling in Crystal Growth (IWMCG-6) is to be held in Lake Geneva, WI, August 9-13, 2009. This Workshop will bring together top senior and promising junior researchers of both academe and industry from the United States, Europe, Asia, and other parts of the world to identify common priorities, allow the exchange of new ideas, and foster future collaborative work. NSF support is sought to promote the attendance of academic researchers, especially young investigators (graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and young faculty). The participation of the academic community is vital for carrying out the mission of this workshop and, more importantly, will enable these researchers to advance their work through international exposure and future collaboration. The International Workshops on Modeling in Crystal Growth are unique in their blending of mathematical analysis, numerical algorithms, and physical applications and their focus on state of the art techniques. Because of the extreme challenges in representing multiple scales in crystal growth modeling, there is a great need for extensive discussions of algorithms and numerical methods. The IWMCG provides a forum that embraces not only in depth discussions of physics but also presentations explaining modeling methods, from mathematical formulation to numerical algorithms to software implementations, on an equal plane. In this regard, more general meetings do not meet the needs of the crystal growth modeling community. While results from modeling are often well received at these more general meetings, more extensive discussions of the details of modeling are not.

Intellectual merit of the proposed activity: In addition to promoting international discourse and collaboration among researchers in this area, this workshop will promote an important and timely research topic. The area of crystal growth is rich in scientific and engineering content and is technologically and economically important, since the U.S. and global electronics industries are literally fabricated upon single-crystalline materials. Modeling the growth of these materials aims to provide needed insight to the physical mechanisms during growth which determine materials quality as well as providing a tool for economic process optimization. Crystal growth is also an area of strategic importance that is in need of strengthening. Indeed, the National Research Council has completed the MSAC study, to be released in June 2009, that asserts that the U.S. has lost several critical competencies in the synthesis of materials due to a lack of federal support for crystal growth. A workshop dedicated to understanding and advancing the field of crystal growth will provide an important means to continue the exchange of ideas in the community and attract newcomers to the area.

Broader impacts resulting from the proposed activity. For the first time, the IWMCG will be held in conjunction with the largest North American crystal growth conference, ACCGE-17/OMVPE 14, allowing workshop attendees to discover the latest advances in all aspects of epitaxial thin film and bulk crystal growth. The joint ACCGE, OMVPE, and IWMCG conferences will bring together researchers from industry, government and academia in an informal setting that is isolated from outside distractions, with ample time for discussion and interaction. They will strive for gender balance and will provide priority support to individuals from under-represented groups that are identified. They are firmly committed to the Americans with Disabilities Act and have ensured that all conference activities are wheelchair accessible. Beyond these criteria, they will attempt to provide the most advanced technical meeting possible, with a mixture of attendees from academic research, industry and educational professions, and also with a mixture of senior and junior investigators, post-doctoral trainees and graduate students.