WORKSHOP ON ETHNIC DIVERSITY IN MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

This award from Divisions of the Directorate of Mathematical and Physical Sciences and the Diratorate for Education and Human Resources supports a workshop to increase awareness of leaders at universities and national laboratories to address ethnic and racial diversity issues in the materials science and engineering (MSE) community. The workshop will be held in Arlington, Virginia, convening the evening of Sunday December 9, 2012 and running through mid-day Tuesday December 11, 2012. The workshop will identify and understand the current status and trends in representation of minorities in MSE, and the major barriers that make science and engineering careers unattractive or unavailable. The workshop will provide a forum (1) to educate those in the MSE community who are in a position to remediate the atmosphere that fosters biases, (2) to develop concrete suggestions to improve the culture for diversity in MSE, and (3) to improve the understanding of the current status and trends in ethnic diversity and equity in MSE. The workshop will result in a set of best practices intended to increase the diversity of faculty members and administrators in MSE and to render the atmosphere welcoming and attractive to all. These best practices will be disseminated in the form of the conference report and publication in an appropriate peer-reviewed journal. This will enable a broader discussion of methods for mitigating diversity issues across the science and engineering community.