Support for Workshop and Mentoring of Junior Researchers at the US National Combustion Meeting

This award is to support three outreach activities held during the US National Combustion Meeting, March 24-27, 2019. These activities include an Early Career Workshop for Combustion Researchers, a Mentoring Mixer, and a Women in Combustion Luncheon. The goal of these activities is to bring together a community of early-career combustion researchers and form action committees to encourage early-career participation in the combustion research community. In the U.S. nearly 70% of energy conversion is accomplished by combustion. Hence the advancement in combustion science is crucial to the society. The participants will further develop four high-priority items, including education and communities of practice, development of mentorship programs, cross-disciplinary collaboration and open-source sharing, and public outreach. Combustion is a key technology for power generation, and this will remain the same for decades to come. However, the combustion research community is facing various technical and non-technical challenges. The participants will identify challenges, educate the early-career researchers about these challenges, and discuss possible solutions. Discussion around technical issues will include brainstorming of novel, possibly cross-disciplinary research areas for future work. On the other hand, various non-technical issues will also be discussed, including mentoring of early-career faculty members and retention of talented researchers of diverse backgrounds. Results of the proposed outreach activities are expected to help build a more productive combustion research community. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.