Nanoparticle assembly is a hierarchical approach to functional materials. It operates at the mesoscale where elementary building blocks still feel their atomic nature and can profit from quantum function but at the same time are flexible enough in shape and interaction to permit high structural complexity. The realization of nanoparticle assemblies requires the convergence of and communication among several scientific disciplines: chemistry for synthesis, materials science for characterization, chemical engineering for up-scaling, and physics for a theoretical description and quantum phenomena.

The goal of the conference will be to provide a coherent view of the current state of the field, bringing together researchers with different expertise and background. It should catalyze the development of new methods, both theoretical, computational and experimental, and define the basic science in this field. A focus will be recent developments but also a look forward: What should be the focus for the next decade and beyond? What are they key physics concepts that need to be developed and from where will the new game-changing technological advances emerge?

PLEASE NOTE: During the conference there will be an opportunity to present a poster. If you are interested in presenting a poster please visit the conference website and submit your title and abstract. Each poster board is 4 feet high x 6 feet wide. We ask that the posters be no larger than 44 inches high x 34 inches wide at the most (it is important to follow these measurements or posters may be turned down due to limited space). The deadline to submit a poster is April 14. A small number of submitted posters will be selected by the organization committee for contributed talks in the conference.

Invited speakers:

Uri Banin, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Qian Chen, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Marjolein Dijkstra, Utrecht University

Zvonimir Dogic, Affiliation: University of California Santa Barbara

Alexander L. Efros, Naval Research Laboratory

Kristen Fichthorn, Penn State University

Oleg Gang, Columbia University

Sharon Glotzer, University of Michigan

Hannu Häkkinen, University of Jyvaskyla

Tobias Hanrath, Cornell University

Lisa Hall, Ohio State

Victor I. Klimov, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Maksym Kovalenko, ETH Zurich

Eugenia Kumacheva, University of Toronto

Tim Liedl, LMU Munich

David Limmer, University of California Berkeley

Jeetain Mittal, Texas A&M University

Chad Mirkin, Northwestern University

Oleg Prezhdo, University of Southern California

Ivan I. Smalyukh, University of Colorado Boulder

Mario Tagliazucchi, University of Buenos Aires

Dmitri Talapin, University of Chicago

Alexei V. Tkachenko, Brookhaven National Laboratory

Hao Yan, Arizona State University

Xingchen Ye, Indiana University Bloomington

Gerard Wong, University of California Los Angeles