Discover the World of
Liquid Crystals

Liquid Crystal Day

Oct. 8, 2010
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Samsung Auditorium
Liquid Crystal Institute
Kent State University
Kent, Ohio, USA

About Liquid Crystal Day

Liquid Crystal Day serves to provide platforms for intellectual and enlightening interactions between students and researchers from different academic and professional areas. This annual event was initiated by Professor L.-C. Chien in 2004 to continue the LCI's tradition of holding symposia on liquid crystals. The event is free and open to the public. All activities will take place at the Liquid Crystal Institute, in the Liquid Crystal and Materials Sciences Building (LCM) on the Kent Campus. The mission is three-fold: (1) to provide a platform for several distinguished experts in the field of liquid crystals to shed light on some important topics in the field, (2) to bring back Kent State alumni to speak about his/her experience at Kent State and how that helped his/her career, and (3) to give future Ph.D students of our Chemical Physics Interdisciplinary Graduate Program at LCI a sneak peek of what the field of liquid crystals has to offer.

The main theme of this year’s LCD is set to Liquid Crystals with biological relevance. Our distinguished invited speakers include Professor Nicholas L. Abbott; Professor Hiroshi Yokoyama; Professor Jonathan Selinger and distinguished alumni Dr. Jianlin Li (President of Polytronix, Inc.). Other highlights include: student talks, student poster presentations, LCI lab tours and demos, and an industrial exhibition. We will post updated information in the website (http://www.lcd.kent.edu/) soon.

Program

8:30 - 9:00 AM	Registration
9:00 - 9:05	Welcome Remarks by Sonia Alemagno, Interim Vice President for Research
	Invited Talks, Chaired by Hiroshi Yokoyama
9:15 - 10:00	Hiroshi Yokoyama, Professor and Ohio Research Scholar, CPIP and LCI, Kent State University Invited talk "Toward Liquid Crystal-based Molecular Motors"
	Jonathan Selinger, Professor and Ohio Eminent Scholar, CPIP and LCI, Kent State University Invited talk "Dynamics of Liquid-Crystal Films: Fundamentals and Applications"
10:05 - 10:50	Nicholas L. Abbott, John T. and Magdalen L. Sobota Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Wisconsin Madison Invited talk "Biomolecular Interactions at the Interfaces of Confined Liquid Crystals "
10:50 - 11:10	Coffee Break
11:10 - 12:00 noon	Student presentations (~12 minutes each), Chaired by Antal Jakli
	Steven E. Fiester, "Optical Properties of a Viral Protein"
	Sonal Dey, "Dynamics of Structural Change in Main Chain Liquid Crystal Elastomer under Strain"
	Israel Lazo, "Dynamics of Colloidal Particles in nematic Liqid Crystals"
	Vianney Gimenez-Pinto, "Numerical Studies of the Electrical Response on Defect Textures and Dynamics in Cholesteric Droplets"
12:00 - 12:10	Group photo outside the LCI building
12:10 - 1:45	Lunch break
1:50 - 3:50	Poster Session (view 2010 abstracts) and Industrial Exhibition
4:00 - 4:05	Distinguished Alumni Award, presented by Liang-Chy Chien
4:05 - 4:35	Jianlin Li, President of Polytronix Inc. Invited talk "The story of an ex-LCIer"
4:35 - 4:45	Student poster awards, presented by Qi-Huo Wei
4:45 - 5:00	Oleg Lavrentovich, concluding remarks

Invited Speakers

Professor Nicholas L. Abbott, University of Wisconsin - Madison
http://www.engr.wisc.edu/che/faculty/abbott_nicholas.html

Professor Hiroshi Yokoyama, Kent State University
http://www.lci.kent.edu/PI/yokoyama.htm

Professor Jonathan Selinger, Kent State University
http://www.lci.kent.edu/PI/SelingerJ.htm

Distinguished Alumni
Dr. Jianlin Li
President
Polytronix, Inc. http://www.polytronix.com/

Industrial Exhibition
Exhibitors include:

AlphaMicron, Inc.
Kent Displays, Inc.
LXD, Inc.
LCI Industrial Partnership Program
Technology Transfer, Kent State University

If you would like to have an exhibit at Liquid Crystal Day 2010 contact Qi-Huo Wei at qwei@kent.edu. The industrial exhibition will likely start at 1:30 p.m. in the LCI 2nd Floor Atrium.

Scientific Committee
Prof. Qi-Huo Wei
Prof. Hiroshi Yokoyama
Prof. Antal Jakli
Prof. L.-C. Chien

Organizing Committee

Chair: Prof. Qi-Huo Wei
Vice-Chairs: Prof. Hiroshi Yokoyama and Prof. Antal Jakli
Student Volunteers: Christopher Culbreath

Sponsors

We greatly appreciate the generous financial support by LXD Inc., Division of Research and Sponsored Programs, and the Liquid Crystal Institute.