Collings, Peter J.

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Peter J. Collings

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Liquid Crystals Today

Report on the 26th international liquid crystal conference

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Swarthmore College Works Physics & Astronomy Faculty Works Physics & Astronomy 2017 Report On The 26th International Liquid Crystal Conference Peter J. Collings Swarthmore College, pcollin1@swarthmore.edu This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. This work is brought to you for free and open access by . It has been accepted for inclusion in Physics & Astronomy Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact myworks@swarthmore.edu. Follow this and additional works at: https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-physics  Part of the Physics Commons Let us know how access to these works benefits you  Recommended Citation Peter J. Collings. (2017). "Report On The 26th International Liquid Crystal Conference". Liquid Crystals Today. Volume 26, Issue 1. 11-13. DOI: 10.1080/1358314X.2017.1279441 https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-physics/311 Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttp://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tlcy20Download by: [Swarthmore College] Date: 05 December 2017, At: 08:48Liquid Crystals TodayISSN: 1358-314X (Print) 1464-5181 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tlcy20Report on the 26th international liquid crystalconferencePeter J. CollingsTo cite this article: Peter J. Collings (2017) Report on the 26th international liquid crystalconference, Liquid Crystals Today, 26:1, 11-13, DOI: 10.1080/1358314X.2017.1279441To link to this article:  https://doi.org/10.1080/1358314X.2017.1279441© 2017 The Author(s). Published by InformaUK Limited, trading as Taylor & FrancisGroupPublished online: 14 Feb 2017.Submit your article to this journal Article views: 267View related articles View Crossmark dataCONFERENCE REPORTReport on the 26th international liquid crystal conferenceThe 26th International Liquid Crystal Conference (ILCC)was held on the campus of Kent State University, Kent,OH, USA, from 31 July to 5 August 2016 (Figure 1).William Doane served as the Honorary Chair andHiroshi Yokoyama, Director of the Liquid CrystalInstitute, chaired the conference (Figure 3). TheOrganising Committee consisted mainly of scientistsassociated with Kent State University, while the 38members of the Scientific Committee (chaired byPeter Palffy-Muhoray) came from countries all over theworld.The 670 conference participants came from 37 coun-tries. About 300 of them were members of theInternational Liquid Crystal Society (ILCS), and around200 of them were students. Plenary talks were given byJohn Ball (University of Oxford) (Figure 4), AchintyaBhowmilk (Intel Corporation), Shin-ichi Ishiwata(Waseda University), Tom Lubensky (University ofPennsylvania) and Jose Luis Serrano (University ofZaragoza). In addition, there were 80 invited presenta-tions (25 min), 145 contributed presentations (20 min)and 421 poster presentations.The conference officially opened on Monday, but aseries of six tutorials and a public lecture were orga-nised during the day on Sunday, followed by aWelcome Reception Sunday evening (Figure 2). Thetutorials were given by Dirk Broer (TechnicalUniversity Eindhoven), Noel Clark (University ofColorado), Cristina Marchetti (Syracuse University),Martin Schadt (MS High-Tech Consulting), HideoTakezoe (Toyota Physical and Chemical ResearchInstitute) and Slobodan Zumer (University ofLjubliana). The public lecture entitled ‘The Art ofScientific Presentation’ was delivered by JanLagerwall (University of Luxembourg).For the 5 days of the conference, the mornings weretaken up by four sessions and the ILCS GeneralMeeting/Awards Session. There were three afternoonsessions and one afternoon for excursions. During thesession times, either five or six parallel sessions tookplace for a total of 37 sessions. Posters were presentedbefore the three afternoon sessions. The general break-down of the subject matter of the presentations wasFigure 2. The author of this report in discussion with Bill Doane, theHonorary Chairman of the conference, at the Sunday eveningreception.Figure 1. Kent State University in Ohio, USA, was the venue for the26th ILCC, already the sixth time that the university hosts this event.Figure 3. As Chairman of the conference, Hiroshi Yokoyamaopens the meeting with a short speech.LIQUID CRYSTALS TODAY, 2017VOL. 26, NO. 1, 11–13http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1358314X.2017.1279441© 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupThis is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or builtupon in any way.Downloaded by [Swarthmore College] at 08:48 05 December 2017 Physics and Mathematical Studies: 300; Chemistry,Biology, and Materials: 239; Applied Research: 109;and History and Industrial Perspective: 9.As is the custom, the ILCS conferred its annualawards and prizes at the ILCC, and this time it wasespecially exciting. The Glenn H. Brown Prizes went toDaniel Bellor (Harvard University), Johanna Bruckner(University of Stuttgart), Angel Martinez (University ofPennsylvania) and Israel Lazo-Martinez (SamsungDisplay). All four of these prize winners conductedsuperlative research and the talks during the awardssession were outstanding. The winner of the ILCSEarly-Career Award (The Michi Nakata Prize) wasTaizo Mori (National Institute for Materials Science,Japan), and the ILCS Mid-Career Awards were pre-sented to Ingo Dierking (University of Manchester)and Georg Mehl (University of Hull). The highlight ofthe awards session was bestowing the ILCS de GennesPrize for the first time. This award comes with a medaldesigned by the daughter of Pierre-Gilles de Gennesand was presented to Noel Clark (University ofColorado) (Figure 5).As is always the case with conferences organisedby liquid crystal researchers at Kent State University,the planning for the conference was extensive andjust about every aspect of the conference ransmoothly. The airport shuttle service, the inexpensivebut comfortable dormitory rooms, the outfitting ofthe rooms used for oral and poster sessions, thearrangements for conferees to eat breakfast andlunch and the financial help given to scientists whoneeded it were all arranged extremely well. On theother hand, some comments heard at the conferenceconcerned the scheduling of five or six parallel ses-sions. Although this gave many conferees the oppor-tunity to present their work orally, it was necessary tomake many difficult choices of which talks to hear.Finally, there were also people who felt that womenwere not sufficiently represented among the invitedpresenters. None of the five plenary speakers werewomen, one of the six tutorial presenters was awoman, and between 20% and 25% of the invitedspeakers were women.The ILCC is held every two years, so the confer-ence ended with a short presentation about the nextILCC. The 27th International Liquid Crystal Conferencewill be held on 22–27 July 2018 in Kyoto, Japan.Takashi Kato (University of Tokyo) is the conferencechair.Let me end with some personal observations. I hadthe honour of presenting my research in the last slot ofthe last session, a situation that sooner or later happensto all of us! Needless to say, I was very much relieved tosee plenty of people in the audience, and I have toassume the same was true for the speakers in parallelsessions. I think it speaks to the success of the confer-ence that so many people attended sessions up to thevery end.The area of research that I found most exciting atthe conference was the ever-increasing foray of liquidcrystals into the biological realm. Living liquid crystalsas an example of out-of-equilibrium systems, activesystems in which energy is constantly being con-verted into self-sustained motion and self-organisedFigure 4. It is not often that a mathematician, here John Ballfrom Oxford University, gives a plenary lecture at the ILCC.Figure 5. Noel Clark (right) is the first recipient of the de GennesPrize.12 P. J. COLLINGSDownloaded by [Swarthmore College] at 08:48 05 December 2017 liquid crystal networks driven by molecular motorsseem to create a whole new dimension for the fieldof liquid crystals.Finally, let me say that I thoroughly enjoyed theConference Banquet at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame(Figure 6). Maybe it was the excellent food (it definitelywas not the long lines!), perhaps it was a taste of whiskythat had been aged 24 h using a new chemical processinstead of a similar number of years in barrels, or justmaybe it was this child of the 60s walking throughexhibit after exhibit showing singers, musicians androck groups that brought back so many memories ofmy youth.Peter J. CollingsDepartment of Physics & Astronomy, Swarthmore College,Swarthmore, PA, USApcollin1@swarthmore.eduFigure 6. The Rock&Roll Hall of Fame certainly was an uncon-ventional venue for the conference dinner to take place, butone where all participants enjoyed looking through the photo-graphs, clothes and instruments of their musical heroes.LIQUID CRYSTALS TODAY 13Downloaded by [Swarthmore College] at 08:48 05 December 2017 

Report On The 26th International Liquid Crystal Conference

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Report On The 26th International Liquid Crystal Conference

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