| When |
Jun 30, 2025 08:15 AM
to
Jul 02, 2025 04:30 PM |
|---|---|
| Where | Norris University Center, Louis Room, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL - 1999 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208 (USA) |
| Add event to calendar |
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Northwestern University is hosting the Diffusion Fundamentals XI conference from June 30-July 2 (2025) in Evanston, Illinois (USA).
This event, “Spreading in Nature, Technology, and Society” will bring together a highly interdisciplinary group of scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and social scientists interested in diffusion and related spreading phenomena. The 2025 edition of this biannual conference marks 20 years since its first installment.
The topics will include basic principles of diffusion theory and simulation; experimental measurements and applications in biology, chemistry, physics, and engineering; and spreading phenomena in archaeology, ecology, epidemics, linguistics, sociology, and other disciplines.
Around 60 participants are expected, hailing from the US, Abu Dhabi, Australia, Belgium, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.
The phenomenon of diffusion occurs in many systems of technological importance, such as mixing, catalytic reactors, and membranes for energy-efficient separation of mixtures. Snurr, who is a Corresponding Member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig (Germany), notes that “the same framework can also be applied to understand the spreading of ideas and concepts, diseases, languages, plants, and animals. The conference aims to bring together researchers from these different fields to explore connections among the different phenomena described by similar underlying mechanisms.”
The subsequent 12th Diffusion-Fundamentals Conference is scheduled to be organized in July 2027 by Rob Ameloot jointly with Dirk Rochtus in Leuven, Belgium.
A particular focus of this anniversary conference is on the diffusion of guest molecules in nanoporous materials, celebrating the successful completion of an IUPAC Technical Report intended “to provide a first comprehensive set of guidelines for measurements and reporting of diffusion properties of chemical compounds in nanoporous materials serving for catalytic, mass separation and other relevant purposes” as the authors write on the the IUPAC website. IUPAC stands for International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.
The report has evolved over the last 10 years by continuous discussion within a team of 22 researchers from all over the world. "During this time, the Diffusion Fundamentals Conferences always provided an excellent atmosphere for such discussions", says Jörg Kärger, initiator of the conference series and chair of the IUPAC initiative.
The lectures of this year’s Diffusion-Fundamentals Conference with reference to the IUPAC initiative will be given by Stefano Brandani, Edinburgh, in a Key Note Lecture, by Yu Wang, US, Exxon-Mobil, and by William Price, Sydney, as well as by Michael Goepel in a joint talk from the Physics and Chemistry Departments of Leipzig University, on place of Jörg Kärger.
Monica Olvera de la Cruz, the Lawyer Taylor Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering, will deliver one of the keynote lectures, titled “Dynamics of Simple and Complex Electrolytes in Confinement.” Julio M. Ottino, Distinguished Robert R. McCormick Institute Professor and Walter P. Murphy Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, will deliver a pre-dinner talk, titled "Determinism, Chaos, and Probability: Newton, Poincaré, and Maxwell.”
This year's conference is being organized by Randall Snurr, John G. Searle Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering; Daniel Abrams, Professor of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics; Matthew Grayson, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Niall Mangan, Assistant Professor of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics; and Todd Gingrich, Assistant Professor of Chemistry.
Along with Northwestern University, the conference is co-sponsored by the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig, Germany.
Further information
Conference website
https://diffusionfundamentals11.org/
Conference Location on Open Street Map
https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/16505176#map=17/42.053623/-87.674224
IUPAC Technical Report
https://iupac.org/projects/project-details/?project_nr=2015-002-2-100
Please note that the time given follows the local time of the venue: UTC/GMT -5 hrs.