Vol. 34 No. 2
March-April 2012

Novel Materials and their Synthesis

by Yuping Wu

The IUPAC International Conference on Novel Materials and Synthesis (NMS), initiated in 2005 in Shanghai, took place 16–21 October 2011 at Fudan University, Shanghai, China. This marked the seventh time that this conference was held jointly with the International Symposium on Fine Chemistry and Functional Polymers (FCFP), which began in 1987 in China and has been held on an almost annual basis ever since.

The NMS-VII & FCFP-XXI were sponsored by IUPAC, The National Natural Science Foundation of China, Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, and National Basic Research Program of China. Stanislaw Penczek (IUPAC representative), Xingao Gong (head of the division of Science and Technology, Fudan University), Yi Tang (head of the Department of Chemistry, Fudan University) and two cochairs delivered welcome and opening addresses.

Stanislaw Penczek delivers a welcome from IUPAC.

The conference brought together 410 participants from 40 countries and regions, including some from industry. For the first time in the NMS series, more than 400 abstracts were submitted. The conference mainly discussed innovative catalytic and other synthetic methods, bio- and biobased materials or composites, innovative polymer materials, energy systems, nanomaterials, ceramic materials, other novel materials and synthesis related to environment, medicine and analysis, and neutron scattering technologies.

The following eminent scientists delivered lectures on their research: Klaus Muellen (Germany), Hiroyuki Nishide (Japan), Huijun Zhao (Australia), Stanislaw Penczek (Poland), Gang Wei (Australia), Yury Shchipunov (Russia), Jean-Pol Dodelet (Canada), Hsin-Chiao Daniel Ouyang (USA), and Shinji Inagaki (Japan).

For the first time, the IUPAC—Prof. Jiang Novel Materials Youth Prize was awarded. The winners were Zhibo Li from the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, and Jr-Hau He from National Taiwan University, Taiwan, China. Each winner received a cash prize of USD 1000 and travel expenses. The winners’s biographies can be found on the IUPAC website at <www.iupac.org/web/nt/2011-10-26_jiang_novel_prize>.

Three participants from Japan, Poland, and USA won the IUPAC Poster Prize. In addition, the Distinguished Award 2011 for Novel Materials and their Synthesis was granted to Guoxiu Wang (Australia), Fusayoshi Masuda (Japan), André-Jean Attias (France) and Bao-Lian Su (Belgium).

The conference proved to be a high-level forum for participants to exchange ideas about novel materials and synthesis. Many participants strongly recommended that it be held every odd year in Shanghai.

The social activities of the conference included a night cruise along Pujiang River, an acrobatic performance, and a one-day tour of Fudan University and Shanghai.

The next symposium in the series will be held in Xi’An, China, 14–19 October 2012.

Yuping Wu <[email protected]> is a professor in the Department of Chemistry & Shanghai Key Laboratory of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, Fudan University, Shanghai, China