SBPMat (B-MRS), represented by its president Osvaldo Novais de Oliveira Junior, attended two events held in China in October, organized by Asian materials research societies and also by the European society for materials research. The events were the 5th World Materials Summit on Advanced Materials for Sustainable Society Development and the IUMRS International Conference in Asia. The president of SBPMat was invited by the China Materials Research Society (C-MRS) and the International Union of Materials Research Societies (IUMRS). In addition to attending both events, Osvaldo Novais de Oliveira Junior was part of the international advisory committee at the first event, and Professor Roberto Mendonça Faria, former SBPMat president and second vice president of IUMRS, participated in the international advisory committees of both events.
“The Materials research societies in Asia have made great efforts to integrate with each other and with societies from other parts of the world,” states Prof. Novais de Oliveira Junior, highlighting the work of MRS from China, Japan, South Korea and Singapore. “For several years there has been a close relationship between SBPMat and these societies, which will be represented at our next meeting in Gramado from September 10 to 14, 2017”, he added.
The summit, held in Rizhao, Shandong Province, from October 18 to 20, was organized by the materials research societies of China (C-MRS), Europe (E-MRS), Korea (MRS-K) and Japan (MRS-J), and also by the Rizhao Science and Technology Association. It is an annual event where scientists, politicians and entrepreneurs are invited by the organization. They come together to present and discuss the subject of advanced materials for the development of a sustainable society, focusing on specific themes in each edition. In 2016, the themes chosen were renewable energies, mainly for motor vehicles, construction materials focusing on sustainability and materials for oceanographic engineering.
According to Professor Novais de Oliveira Junior, the most relevant conclusions of the event regarded the need for international collaborative actions, highlighting the distinctive quality of Materials Science and Engineering to solve crucial problems facing humanity, thanks to the integrated, multifaceted approach and the synergy between experiment, theory and computational simulation this discipline is able to offer. Specifically on the themes of the fifth edition of the event, the president of SBPMat stressed the importance of developing more durable, higher capacity and safer batteries, and the need for sea and building materials research investigations. “As a matter of fact, data regarding maintenance costs of large civil works, such as bridges, viaducts and roads, were presented in the summit, which indicate a great demand for advanced materials, not only to reduce costs, but also to guarantee sustainability,” declared the president of SBPMat. He also mentioned the excellent presentations by European experts in regard to the forms of renewable energy sources that can be extracted from the sea. According to the professor, a document with the main conclusions of the event is being prepared by the participants.
The second event, October 20 to 24, was held in Qingdao also in Shandong province, about 150 km from Rizhao, organized by C-MRS and the Taiwan Materials Research Society (MRS-T). This even consisted of 4 plenary lectures and 27 symposiums on materials for energy and the environment, advanced structural and functional materials, biological materials, and simulation, modeling and characterization of materials.