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CONFERENCE REPORTS
Inaugural Meeting of Brazil-MRS Held in July Almost 400 scientists from 18 countries gathered in Rio de Janeiro from July 7 to 10 for the inaugural meeting of the Brazilian Society for Materials Research (BrazilMRS), also known by its Portuguese name, Sociedade Brasileira de Pesquisa em Materiais (SBPMat). Under the leadership of SBPMat president Guillermo Solórzano (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro), the program committee assembled five symposia titled “Current Trends in Nanostructured Materials and Systems,” “Advances in the Development of Biomaterials,” “Frontiers in Semiconductor Materials and Devices,” “The Third Brazilian Symposium on Electroceramics,” and “Surface Modifications in Materials and Polymeric Thin Films.” The program included three plenary sessions and a workshop on the processing, properties, and applications of powder materials. A poster session was held each evening, and there was an equipment exhibit. Slightly more than 400 technical presentations were made, either orally or as posters, and the strongly interdisciplinary program provoked lively discussions both in the formal sessions and informally. The meeting emphasized international collaborations, which were the theme of two of the three plenary sessions. R.P.H. Chang (Northwestern University) described his vision of a Materials World Net, providing a Web-based virtual working environment to complement the efforts of international collaborative research programs and institutes in the area of materials research. Adriaan de Graaf of the U.S. National Science Foundation and Celso Mello of the Research Foundation of Brazil’s Ministry of Science and Technology, CNPq, described the creation of mechanisms for joint funding by two or more national governments of international research projects. Mello announced a series of bilateral collaborative research agreements in different topical areas between Brazil and other nations in the Americas, as well as a national program in the area of advanced materials. A small group of journalism students from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro took advantage of the meeting to videotape interviews with many of the scientists in preparation for the creation of a 30-minute documentary on nanotechnology. Held at the Pestana Rio Atlântica Hotel on Copacabana Beach, with Ipanema, Sugarloaf Mountain, and Rio’s other sights close by, the meeting provided a wide range of opportunities for extracurricular activities, but nevertheless held MRS BULLETIN/OCTOBER 2002
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(a) (Left to right) Patricia Souza (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro), Giovanni Marletta (President E-MRS), R.P.H. Chang (General Secretary, International Union of Materials Research Societies), Guillermo Solórzano (President, Brazil-MRS), Alex King (President, MRS) and José Parisi (Dean CTC/PUC-Rio) opened the inaugural meeting of the Brazilian Society for Materials Research (Brazil-MRS), also known by its Portuguese name, Sociedade Brasileira de Pesquisa em Materiais (SB
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