Get Ready For New Orleans

Have you made your plans for New Orleans yet? The 235th ACS national meeting and exposition, which will be held there April 6-10, will take collaboration and scientific excellence to new heights. This is because ACS and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) are colocating their meetings. The joint meeting is expected to involve almost 20,000 participants. Registrants of either meeting can seamlessly attend the technical programming of both meetings as well as the dynamic expositions of each society that will be held in Halls C/D of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.

The technical program will be large, with more than 9,200 unique papers presented in approximately 700 sessions. Attendees from both societies are invited to the ACS/AIChE Opening Reception, which will be held on Sunday evening, to celebrate new endeavors and longtime successes, including the centennials of four ACS technical divisions-Agricultural & Food Chemistry, Industrial & Engineering Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, and Physical Chemistry-as well as the centennial of AIChE.

The multidisciplinary, multisociety meeting theme is "Energy and the Environment." Programming in this area will highlight timely and geographically relevant research. Specifically, there will be 50 symposia under the thematic umbrella of "Energy and the Environment" and 43 symposia cosponsored by divisions of ACS and AIChE in areas such as computation, process chemistry and development, safety, sustainability and alternative fuels, and entrepreneurship. The showcase event of the thematic programming will be the joint Presidential Symposium on Monday afternoon, titled "Energy Research: Future Challenges and Opportunities," which will bring together scientists, engineers, and high-level officials from the Department of Energy. Following the symposium will be a reception hosted by ACS President Bruce E. Bursten and AIChE President Dale Kearns.

Other exciting collaborative cosponsorships will also be showcased in New Orleans. One will feature the ACS Division of Environmental Chemistry, AIChE, and the Center of Advanced Materials for Purification of Water with Systems (WaterCAMPWS). Collaborative programming between the Division of Geochemistry and the Clay Mineral Society will also be a highlight in the program.

New Orleans is ready for ACS. The Morial Convention Center was completely refurbished in 2007, and most of the hotels have undergone significant renovations. Restaurants, shops, and other visitor destinations are open and ready for business, and all essential services have been fully restored. In the past two years, the city of New Orleans has hosted dozens of citywide conferences that had more than 20,000 attendees. Feedback from meeting organizers and participants has been extremely positive, noting the exceptional quality of the facilities, hospitality, security, and, of course, the food.

ACS is no stranger to New Orleans, and those familiar with the convention center know that the journey from one hall to another can seem more of a marathon than a sprint. To ensure attendees spend more time in technical sessions than traveling to them, ACS and AIChE will provide a special minibus service to move attendees between the convention center's Hall A and Hall J, in addition to the shuttles that transport attendees from official ACS hotels to the convention center.

The official ACS hotels in New Orleans offer attendees a wide range of rates and amenities. Attendees staying at these properties enjoy the benefit of easy transportation for the meeting, as all official ACS hotels are either on shuttle routes or footsteps from shuttle stops.

In addition to the cutting-edge research presented by the divisions during technical sessions, you will want to take advantage of all of the meeting's other enrichment opportunities including networking and social events, workshops and short courses, the career fair, and the exposition. Registration and housing for the 235th ACS national meeting and exposition are currently open. More information, including online registration, can be found at www.acs.org/meetings/national.