A&T JOINS WITH NATO TO SPONSOR MAJOR MATERIALS SYMPOSIUM

NEWS RELEASE

Contact: Nettie C. Rowland
(336) 256-0863

June 27,2003

A&T Joins With NATO To Sponsor Major Materials Symposium

GREEENSBORO, N.C. - The Center for Advanced Materials and Smart Structures (CAMSS) of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University joined with The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to sponsor a special materials workshop. The NATO Advanced Research Workshop titled “Mixed Ionic Electronic Conducting Perovskites for Advanced Energy Systems” co-sponsored
by CAMSS was held at the capitol city Kyiv, Ukraine June 1-5.

CAMSS center director and principal investigator, Dr. Jag Sankar and the
Center’s outreach manager and senior research scientist, Dr. Sergey
Yarmolenko, took lead roles in the workshop, which provided a forum for the exchange of information on recent developments in various advanced energy systems especially related to Fuel Cell technology.

Professor Sankar gave a talk on the various activities of CAMSS, chaired
sessions, and organized and led a discussion on “International Collaborative Research Activities in Science: Why, How and When?” The discussion provided
a forum for globalization activities and strategic steps for joint proposals,

funding, exchange of students and scientists, organizing international symposiums through various inter-governmental support programs and other international activities of the existing U.S Federal Agencies Programs. Yarmolenko gave a talk on “Low-cost processing of YSZ thin films for solid oxide fuel cell application.”

According to Sankar one of the key reasons the conference was organized in
Ukraine is that Ukraine contains some of the richest ores of Zirconia, a key material for fuel cell technology. As part of the conference, various avenues of joint activities
in fuel cell and other materials research was explored between Frantsevich Insititute for Problems of Materials Science, the leading federal research facility of Ukraine for materials and CAMSS. Sankar was also interviewed on the Ukranian National television on the importance globalization and international collaborative research activities.