This summer, Pınar Aydoğan Göktürk, a PhD student in the Department of Chemistry, participated in a Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) as an invited speaker. Pınar, who is doing work on ionic liquids with Chemistry Prof. Şefik Süzer, spoke at the seminar held in conjunction with a Gordon Research Conference (GRC) devoted to the topic of “Ionic Liquids as a Critical Enabling Technology for Meeting Current and Future Needs in Energy, Materials, and Living Systems,” held in Newry, Maine (USA), this past August.
The Gordon Research Conferences are held by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) – described as “the world’s largest scientific society,” and the publisher of the eminent multidisciplinary scientific journal Science – through the nonprofit educational organization GRC. GRC’s mission is to “provide an international forum for the presentation and discussion of frontier research in the biological, chemical, physical and engineering sciences, and their related technologies”; the organization currently manages over 340 different ongoing conferences, which provide a forum “for the presentation of research at the frontiers of science” and a place where researchers may “build relationships with leading scientists in their field from around the world.”
The 2018 Gordon Research Seminar on Ionic Liquids, which took place during the weekend leading up to the conference, was the second to be held in this area of investigation, allowing graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and other scientists with comparable levels of experience to present and exchange new results and ideas from the cutting edge of ionic liquids research. The seminar was “particularly dedicated to empowering tomorrow’s leaders in the field to build synergistic efforts involving interdisciplinary collaborations across scientific disciplines and bring innovation in the future of ionic liquid applications.”