UK-China Particle Technology Forum III

Particulate materials account for over 60% of all the industrial products and are of significant importance to the global economy, society and environments. Examples of these materials include dusts, pollutants, catalysts, protective coatings, composites, photocopy and printer toners, cosmetic pastes, pharmaceutical drugs, fertilizers, cement, solids fuels, and foodstuff. However, manufacturing, handling and processing of such materials still face numerous challenges. Both UK and China have developed large communities in particle science & technology in the past few decades for addressing these challenges. In order to facilitate communications and to foster collaborations between the communities in the two countries, the UK-China Particle Technology forum, which is a non-profit event series and is run every two years in rotation between UK and China, was initiated in 2006. The forum aims at1) Enhancing communications between scientists and engineers from both academic institutions and industrial companies of the two countries;2) Establishing a platform to foster new and substantial collaborations to identify and address common challenges in particle technology.The UK-China Particle Technology Forum III continues the primary objective of the two previous forums, which were successfully held in Leeds, UK (2007) and Guiyang, China (2009), to provide opportunities for scientists and engineers to discuss recent advances, to share knowledge and to identify future collaborative research directions in the field of particle science & technology and their roles in environment, energy, healthcare and other emerging applications. It also aims at consolidating the collaborations established through the two previous forums and fostering new collaborations between UK and China.

This forum is a continuation of the previous forums successfully held in UK (2007) and China (2009) aiming to enhance communications between scientists and engineers from both academic institutions and industrial companies of the two countries and to establish a platform to foster new and substantial collaborations to identify and address common challenges in particle technology. These forums have led to numerous mutual visits between communities in the UK and China (> 50) and a number of collaborative research projects. Examples for the former include more 50 funded Chinese researchers (under the scheme of China Scholarship Council) coming to the UK to carry out collaborative research on particle technology and a number of UK researchers are being funded by Chinese government for carrying out collaborative research in China (about 10 in UK particle technology community). This forum will provide opportunities to bring Chinese scholars to UK for further discussions and to consolidate the collaboration and to foster collaborations in new areas (such as emerging particle technology). For this purpose, two special sessions (EPT and CFO) are planned, in addition, it will be the first time that international eminent scholars will be invited to give keynotes lectures at the forum. A dedicated website (http://www.eng.bham.ac.uk/chemical/UK-China-PTF3/index.shtml ) has been constructed to disseminate the forum information, in addition to the publication of the first circular through associated societies, member of organising, advisory and scientific committee, conferences (such as DEM5 and UK PharmSci 2010) and email-lists established through previous two forums. A larger scientific committee and an advisory committee were established with member from various institutions. Furthermore, two special journal issues will be published to ensure good engagement and communication. The organising committee will continue to discuss potential sponsorships and exhibitors to maximise the impact of the forum.