From Tianheng Zhao on the GOSH Forum:
Some of you may miss the opportunities to present your work in GOSH2017 or you wish to have another chance to showcase your progress. Here is another opportunity in a scientific conference (International Materials Research Congress 2017) to show some of the open-source/low-cost hardwares.
I am helping organising a symposium: Low Cost Instrumentation symposium at IMRC 2017 (Cancún, México, August 20-25, 2017).
The proposed symposium is a new topic, that we hope would become a regular feature at materials science and physics conferences, dedicated to recent scientific achievements in low-cost instrumentation. It is intended to showcase real-world problems and the most ingenuous solutions across the world. Tutorials and demo activities will give hands-on insights and resources for aspiring innovators. More details at: https://www.mrs-mexico.org.mx/imrc2017/program-session.php?id=00049
Stories like Prakash Lab’s 50-cent microscope “foldscope” and Whitesides lab’s paper-based diagnostic tool are exciting and inspiring, but more researchers dealing with low-cost innovations should have a platform to present their achievements. The symposium aims to empower scientists with available open platforms and connect scientists with social DIY maker movements. Bridging social innovation and science captures novel opportunities for shared inspiration, engagement of the bottom billion, and providing with technology solutions for everyone.
We encourage you submit abstracts at the link above by the April 7 deadline. We appreciate you using e-mail, but also social media (Facebook, LinkedIn,Twitter) to promote it.
The use of low-cost and/or recycled materials for creating affordable instruments, sensors, analytical devices in domain such as health, environment, and energy could represents a clear breakthrough in developing countries where the lack of funding and sometimes of organized educational and social systems create strong inequalities in the very bulk of societies. Low-cost physics is also a challenge in the scientific and educational systems of the developed world, as a tool for a more sustainable development and social inclusion. The proposed symposium is dedicated to present the scientific achievements that the low-cost approach has reached up to now. Often, the low-cost approach is based on the use of materials, process and techniques that allow for coupling sustainability and high level research and technological development. The symposium is intended to be also a show case for the most ingenuous solutions found in laboratories all over the world. Tutorials and demo activities will represent an important aspect of the symposium.
Symposium Topics
- Educational systems in developing countries through the development of scientific and educational tools from low-cost and/or recycled materials
- Success cases and the related achievements supporting low-cost physics approach
- Scientific and educational relevance of low-cost physics for developed and developing countries.
- Key issues and bottlenecks for the development of scientific and educational tools from low-cost and/or recycled materials
- Creation of a general roadmap bridging the scientific and technological development with the societal needs, with specific reference to developing countries
Invited Speakers
Cesar Costa, Escuela Politecnica Nacional de Quito, Ecuador; Eduardo Montoya, Instituto Peruano de Energia Nuclear, Peru; Luis Ponce, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Mexico; Ernst Van Groningen, Uppsala University, Sweden; Majed Chergui, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne – Switzerland; Sandro Scandolo, International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Italy; Claude Lecomte, International Crystallography Union, France; Tom Baden, University of Tübingen, Germany; Rita Noumeir, University of Quebec, Canada; Joshua Pearce, Technical University of Michigan, USA; Paul Woafo, University of Yaoundé – Cameroon; Zohra Ben Lakhdar, University of Tunis, Tunisia; Jose Gomez-Marquez, The Little Devices Lab, MIT, USA; Anna Young, The Little Devices Lab, MIT, USA; Navi Radjou, Judge Business School, Cambridge, UK; Mmantsae Diale, University of Pretoria, South Africa; José-Daniel Muñoz-Castaño, University of Colombia, Colombia; Gui Lu Long, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China; Ashok Gadgil, University of Berkeley, USA