Concluding remarks for FD 146: Answers and questions

In view of the attractiveness of the basic science involved, and the significance of its applications, it was quite natural and appropriate that a Faraday Discussion in 2010 would be devoted to the Wetting Dynamics of Hydrophobic and Structured Surfaces. Powerful motivation for continued scientific and engineering advances in this area arise from sources as diverse as the fundamental role of hydrophobic interactions in molecular biology, the importance of natural and artificial self-cleaning surfaces, the production of water-repellant textiles, and the technological requirements of microfluidics. The high rate of current related research activity is hard to miss; even as the nearly two dozen invited papers for this Faraday Discussion were being prepared by their authors, collected by the conference organizers, and distributed to participants, the scientific literature exhibited a continuing stream of publications in the same scientific area covered by this Faraday Discussion, but from yet other research groups. As further evidence demonstrating widespread creative involvement in this pervasive subject, one can cite two other recent and closely connected Faraday Discussions, namely FD129 ‘‘The Dynamics and Structure of the Liquid–Liquid Interface’’, and FD141 ‘‘Water—From Interfaces to the Bulk’’. This Faraday Discussion 146 arrived with an important distinction in comparison with its forerunners. The formal meeting was immediately preceded by a three-day Graduate Research Seminar (April 9–11, 2010), held locally at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Engineering. This introductory activity was arranged for the benefit of involved undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students, numbering roughly 40, who would also be part of the following FD 146. Beyond its social amenities, this Graduate Research Seminar offered five formal lectures by established experts (Widom, Yeomans, Evans, Klein, and Qu er e) who would also be involved as invited speakers in the Faraday Discussion sessions to follow. In addition, this Graduate Research Seminar included student oral presentations, and two poster sessions. The organizers’ intentions behind arranging this introductory meeting were to familiarize the young participants with major aspects of the general scientific field, with its terminology, and with at least some of its more seasoned practitioners. Evidently this strategy was successful in bringing the student group into more comfortable interaction with ongoing research activities; during the subsequent three-day Faraday Discussion itself, many of the technical questions and comments directed at the invited speakers were posed confidently and with insight by the younger population of students and committed scientists, an encouraging sign for the intellectual future of the field. A broader implication is that at least some future Faraday Discussions might benefit similarly by arranging analogous preliminary meetings for their own groups of devoted students and early-career scientists. In addition to the formal invited lectures presented at Faraday Discussion 146 (April 12–14, 2010), the program also included its own pair of poster sessions.