The topic was both current and interdisciplinary, bringing together researchers from the fields of soft condensed matter, optics, and photonics.  Add an attractive venue—Boulder, Colorado—and careful efforts to include senior and junior scientists, underrepresented groups, and the broader public, and you have a recipe for a model ICAM international workshop.  This was the meeting dubbed LC2CAM, for light-controlled liquid crystalline complex adaptive materials, which was organized by Noel Clark and Ivan Smalyukh and held August 6-10 on the campus of the University of Colorado at Boulder.  Co-sponsors were ICAM-I2CAM, the University of Colorado, NSF, ONR, AFOSR, the Liquid Crystal Materials Research Center, and five liquid- crystal/photonics companies:  INSTEC, Hamamatsu, Coherent, Vescent Photonics, and Meadowlark Optics.

The focus of the meeting was on recent advances at the interface between soft condensed matter physics and optics, which pose interesting problems in the basic science of liquid crystals.  However, Clark and Smalyukh took advantage of the public appeal of liquid-crystal applications to make this an occasion for scientific outreach.   They scheduled a pre-workshop day devoted to tutorials, exhibits, and early-career events, inviting faculty and students from 10 minority-serving institutions and from the University’s SMART program, a summer research program for minority students, as well as advertising the event widely by means of flyers.  Participants at this Outreach Forum were offered not only lectures, but also a laser show at the nearby Fiske planetarium, a hands-on session on making liquid-crystal “mood patches,” and discussions on early-career topics, including how to deliver a good scientific presentation.  Rachel Won of the Nature Publishing Group, Satyendra Kumar of Kent State University and the National Science Foundation, and Daniel Cox, ICAM’s co-Director were among the panel members discussing scientific careers in “academia, industry, national labs, and beyond.”

LC2CAM, which opened the next day, was arranged in twelve scientific sessions over four days.  Each session included an invited tutorial, an invited lecture, and contributed talks.  Speakers were asked to focus on the open/emerging questions and unsolved problems and to observe the Frauenfelder rules, leaving plenty of time for discussion.  The discussion leaders encouraged participants to think about new collaborations as well as to apply for ICAM exchange awards to facilitate them.  Over the next two years the organizers plan to track collaborations and exchange awards that grow out of the workshop. 

There were two poster sessions, in addition to one at the Outreach Forum, and ongoing displays by industrial exhibitors during the breaks.  The conference also offered tours of the Pearl Street district and, on the final day of the meeting, a tour of the surrounding Rocky Mountains, with lunch in Estes Park, Colorado.  

This workshop had 148 on-site participants and 45 who took part from remote locations via a real-time webcast.  To encourage graduate students and postdocs to attend and present at the workshop, 27 ICAM travel fellowships were awarded, and affordable lodging made available. 

Already a followup event is being planned for next year.  LC2CAM will morph into I-CAMP (Inter-Continental Adaptive Materials and Photonics summer school), a three-week summer school to be held in Harbin, China  June 15-July 10, 2009, with weekend tours to the Great Wall and Beijing.  And the following year, if all goes as planned, there will be an I-CAMP in Yaremche, Ukraine, in the Carpathian Mountains.  

A photo gallery of this year’s LC2CAM is available at http://icam-i2cam.org/conference/lc2cam08/LC2CAMgallery.html.  There is also an archive with high-resolution photos at http://icam-i2cam.org/conference/lc2cam08/LC2CAMphotoarchive.html .  Video recordings of the scientific presentations, tutorials, early-career program, and outreach activities (with some omissions due to patent or publication restrictions) may be found in the LC2CAM archives, http://icam-i2cam.org/conference/lc2cam08/archive.html.  The video recordings are synchronized with PowerPoint and PDF files.  The complete LC2CAM program is posted at http://icam-i2cam.org/conference/lc2cam08/pdf_docs/LC2CAM-Program.pdf and the abstracts of presentations can be found at http://icam-i2cam.org/conference/lc2cam08/listabstracts.php.

By Karie Friedman, ICAMNews, October 2008