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

Greensboro, 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 Institute 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.