ACS Hosts Summit On Organic Electronics

As part of the Chemical Sciences & Society Summit (CS3), representatives from five chemical societies gathered in San Francisco on Sept. 17–20 to assess and forecast research breakthroughs in organic materials and carbon nanostructures, and how their architectures can be designed for novel electronic applications.

This year’s summit was spearheaded by the American Chemical Society Committee on International Activities and organized by the ACS Office of International Activities.

“CS3 is unique because of its global vision of bringing diverse people together to address global challenges through the applications of chemical sciences,” said ACS President-Elect Marinda Li Wu during opening remarks. Wu was joined by senior representatives from the Chemical Society of Japan, the Chinese Chemical Society, the German Chemical Society, and the U.K.’s Royal Society of Chemistry.

Since its inception in 2009, CS3 annually assembles a small group of top researchers in a particular field to address global problems in key economic sectors such as health, food, energy, and the environment. CS3 is cosponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation and its global counterparts: the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the German Research Foundation, and the U.K. Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council.

The U.S. delegation was chaired by Cherie R. Kagan of the University of Pennsylvania. Partner delegations were led by Xi Zhang of Tsinghua University in China, Takuzo Aida of the University of Tokyo, Peter Bäuerle of the University of Ulm in Germany, and Peter Skabara of the University of Strathclyde in the U.K.

The summit “brought together the collective minds of leaders from different countries to define important directions where advances in science and technology of organic electronics promise to impact the health and prosperity of our global society,” Kagan said.

The meeting included brainstorming sessions and presentations of each country’s vision statements. A joint report will be released in early 2013.