AMLCI Materials Day 2023 - Chirality and Optical Activity
- Kent
Where & When
Materials Day will take place in the lower level -- in room 069 -- of the Integrated Science Building on Kent State University's Kent Campus. The street address is 1175 Lefton Esplanade, Kent, Ohio.
Parking locations near the building are noted below with red markers. Please use the Summit Street entrance indicated by the yellow arrow on the map below to enter the building.
April 28, 2023 - Friday
5: 00pm - Opening Remarks
5:10 pm - Key Note Speaker: Noel A. Clark, Professor of Distinction, Director - Soft Materials Research Center, University of Colorado at Boulder
5:50 pm - Featured Talk - Nicholas A. Kotov, University of Michigan
6:20 pm - Refreshments
6:40 pm - TED talks from three Fellowship Awardees
Glenn H. Brown Fellowship: For outstanding graduate students who are engaged in research on biological or biology related topics of liquid crystals.
Alfred Saupe Fellowship: For outstanding graduate students working on physics or material sciences of liquid crystals.
James Fergason Fellowship: For outstanding graduate students working on applied research using liquid crystals.
April 29, 2023 - Saturday
9:00 am - Invited Speakers
5:00 pm - Poster Session
Theme
The theme of the 2023 AMLCI Materials Day “Chirality & Optical Activity” recognizes the pivotal role chirality plays in nature and in materials science. Chirality—the absence of mirror symmetry—is a fundamental concept involved in the creation, assembly, and specificity of biological, chemical, mechanical and optical properties of materials and is intricately woven into the fabric of the origin of life itself. The keynote, presented by Prof. Noel A. Clark from the University of Colorado at Boulder, “Liquid Crystals, Chirality, and the Origin of Life: Features of an Ancient Liquid Crystal World”, will be a testament to this notion. Introducing chirality to liquid crystals in particular has led to a wealth of new phases, phenomena, and devices, and MD2023 will attempt to capture the tremendous role chirality has played and will continue to play in the future.
This year, Materials Day 2023 is co-hosted by the AMLCI and the Design Innovation (DI) Initiative at KSU, and we will again convene in the lower level of the Integrated Sciences Building on the KSU main campus. Topics will range from chirality’s key role for the origin of life and chiral nanomaterials to devices that take advantage of chiral solutes inducing chiral liquid crystal phases. In addition, MD2023 is the venue where we will introduce the AMLCI−DI “Materials & Devices Start-Up Challenge”; a competition for multidisciplinary entrepreneurial teams to generate ideas, develop prototypes, and create a business model toward the generation of a minimum viable product (MVP).
Keynote
“Liquid Crystals, Chirality, and the Origin of Life: Features of an Ancient
Liquid Crystal World”
Noel A. Clark, Professor of Distinction and Director - Soft Materical Research Center, University of Colorado at Boulder
![Noel Clark Portrait](https://www-s3-live.kent.edu/s3fs-root/s3fs-public/noel_clark_head.jpg?VersionId=FadIO3BRFYWyLXvnEK7v9RQeJBZYP8Oa)
April 28, 2023
Noel Clark was born in 1940 in Cleveland, Ohio, where he received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in physics from John Carroll University. He received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1970 and joined the Harvard University Division of Applied Sciences as a research fellow and junior faculty. He moved to Boulder in 1977 where he is currently Professor of
Physics at the University of Colorado. Clark's research has concerned various aspects of soft condensed matter and complex fluid physics, including liquid crystals, colloids and biophysics. He has been involved in fundamental studies of liquid crystal ordering in a variety of systems, creating novel phases and exploring the role of chirality in soft materials. In recent years his research has focused on the role of liquid crystals sin the appearance of DNA in early life. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. In 2003 was awarded the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize of the American Physical Society, and in 2016 the inaugural Pierre Gilles de Gennes Prize of the International Liquid Crystal Society for career achievement in liquid crystal science.
Program
The program will be released closer to Materials Day, stay tuned!
Poster Session
Materials Day will have a poster session in-person for anyone who is registered to come and ask questions. Abstracts based on this template can be uploaded at the link below
Sponsors
![Kent Displays](https://www-s3-live.kent.edu/s3fs-root/s3fs-public/kent%20displays_0.jpg?VersionId=VN10ojX2oXSTN50T0ZCDdDf_LlC1u8bK)
![merck](https://www-s3-live.kent.edu/s3fs-root/s3fs-public/memd%20performance%20materials_0_1.jpg?VersionId=IAjVQQ8Y4amD3iZLAJYKEjxuPE2BkbEd)