MRS FOCUS ON Sustainability
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MRS
FOCUS
ON
cluster. One of those symposia, EE15: Materials for Sustainable Development— Integrated Approaches, will be the foundation of a suite of Focus on Sustainability activities that seek to build a robust community of practice around materials and sustainability. Focus on Sustainability debuted at the 2014 MRS Fall Meeting with Symposium FF: Materials as Tools for Sustainability and related programming, including a tutorial, student poster exhibition, and industry panel discussion on corporate social responsibility. The 2016 MRS Spring Meeting Focus on Sustainability will build on that successful model. The two-day EE15 Symposium will include technical talks and posters on topics such as materials for water purification, materials impacts on human health and the environment, and materials for alternative energy sources, as well as a half-day session focused on sustainable supplychain issues in industry. A half-day tutorial on how to teach the importance of materials in sustainable development will precede the symposium. A suite of complementary activities includes a professional development seminar on how to integrate sustainability principles into materials research, a MRS University Chapter student poster exhibition on “Sustainability in My Community,” and public outreach and Meeting attendee engagement, including hands-on activities, free outreach resources, and special features at the Focus on Sustainability informational booth in The Hub. Shifting materials scientists’ perceptions of and approaches to sustainable development will take a concerted effort that builds over time. In the near term, MRS’s Focus on Sustainability Subcommittee will seed future activities and events at MRS Meetings and will coordinate with publications that put the materials-sustainability nexus in the spotlight. In the long term, the efforts aim to encourage students and young researchers, faculty, and industry representatives to see sustainable development as a defining challenge of our time and as a context in which much of materials research should be framed. Ashley A. White
Sustainability
www.mrs.org/sustainability
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ustainable development entails meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, as defined by the United Nations Brundtland Commission. As technology enablers, materials continue to play a pivotal role in solving the key challenges our society will continue to face, such as carbon dioxide mitigation, access to clean energy and water, and a dependable supply of raw and recycled materials for infrastructure, devices, and consumables. Meeting these challenges will require new approaches to materials science as well as expertise from other fields, including various scientific and engineering disciplines, sociology, economics, and policy. Recognizing the complexity of tackling sustainable development issues and the importance of materials to enabling solutions, the Board of Directors of the Materials Research Society (MRS) recently approved the
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