“Reimagining Bioproducts Industries: New Ideas — New Opportunities,” will be held at the Paper Tricentennial Building, 500 10th St. NW, on the Georgia Tech campus in Atlanta.

The conference will focus on three strategic areas and will be led by RBI associate directors: Operational Excellence in Advanced Pulping, Paper & Packaging led by Chris Luettgen; The Future of Biocomposites and Nanocellulose led by Meisha Shofner; and New Opportunities in Biochemicals led by Matthew Realff. A full agenda can be seen here.

Keynote speakers will complement faculty and student presentations for each of these tracks—Soydan Ozcan, Oak Ridge National Lab, for biocomposites and nanocellulose; Gregg Beckham, National Renewable Energy Lab, for biochemicals; and John Rager, RISI, for pulp, paper and packaging. Beckham will also deliver the keynote address to open the conference.

Georgia Tech Executive Vice President for Research will discuss the Institute’s Innovation Ecosystem and the benefits of collaborations between GT and companies. Those benefits will further be explored Wednesday during the closing plenary session, with presentations by Norman Marsolan, executive director, RBI; Don McConnell, vice president, Office of Industry Collaboration, GT; Naresh Thadhani, chair of the School of Materials Science Engineering; and Sankar Nair, associate chair for Industry Outreach, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at GT.

The conference brings together thought leaders from a variety of companies and industries and connects them with faculty and students conducting research relevant to their businesses. Attendees hear the latest advancements in processing and application of renewable materials during these presentations and join extensive plenary discussions with their peers and colleagues. 

The student poster competition allows for one-on-one interaction between company representative and some of the brightest young minds in cutting-edge research.

Three concurrent tracks, moderated by leading experts in their fields of research, will feature faculty presentations on current directions and opportunities. Afternoon workshops will follow, along with discussion regarding the practical application of these advances into a reimagined bioproducts arena.

“We’ve had a tremendous response this year, near record registration,” said Norman Marsolan, RBI executive director. “We believe the executives appreciate the format where they are free to choose the track most relevant to their business, hear in-depth reports on research in that area and then participate in a full afternoon of brainstorming and discussion on how it might positively impact their bottom line.”

“There are very few opportunities to experience this type of up-close interaction with those directing research. The ability to take advantage of and influence our endowment-sponsored student research is another distinction.”

RBI’s endowment sponsors about 42 Ph.D. students this academic year, and more than 40 are expected to participate in the annual poster competition. Students will also be featured speakers during the conference. Attendees will have an opportunity to meet these students, and discuss how their research could be valuable or made more relevant to their companies. Finally, the conference allows companies to influence the future research at RBI.

“During the discussion sessions, we listen to the input, and input has a direct impact on how we tailor our programs and future research projects to create opportunity for their business,” Marsolan said. “This is truly an open discussion between researchers and company leadership.”

For more information, visit the RBI conference site. Click hereto register today. 

The Regency Suites-Midtown rooms available at a preferred rate for conference guests. To reserve your room, please call the hotel at 404.876.5003 and ask for the RBI conference rate. Many hotels in the Midtown area have Georgia Tech preferred rates. Please be sure to specify “Georgia Tech” when you call to make your reservation.

All events associated with the conference will be held at the Paper Tricentennial Building, 500 10th St. NW, on the Georgia Tech campus in Atlanta.

The Renewable Bioproducts Institute (RBI) at Georgia Tech builds on nearly a century of lignocellulosics research at Georgia Tech—one of the nation's leading public research universities and engineering schools. RBI is transforming products and processes with forest- and agriculture-based biochemicals and bioproducts to solve the challenges and create competitive advantages and opportunities for industry as it evolves in the bioeconomy. 

Co-sponsored by the College of Engineering.

Open to the public.

Student Success Center, Clary Theatre

Schedule:

12:30 p.m. - 2 p.m. Poster Competition, ES&T 1st Floor Atrium

1 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. Lunch ES&T 1st Floor Atrium

2:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. Keynote Speaker, ES&T Room L1175

3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. Awards Ceremony, ES&T Room L1175

There will be live music, free Earth Day T-shirts, a green energy challenge, green market, clothing swap, and more. For details about all of the Earth Day events visit www.earthday.gatech.edu.

The goal of Georgia Tech's Earth Day Celebration is to focus attention on the environment and increase people's awareness that small changes make a big impact. The event is free, open to the public, features over 70 exhibitors and includes eco-friendly giveaways, recycling opportunities, a clothing swap, an office supply exchange, live music, and organic popcorn.

This is one of the largest Earth Day celebrations in the southeast. Join us as we celebrate with a purpose!

Regional policies, particularly in the North American context, responded to economic challenges by adopting new technologies and new institutional and organizational forms to manage growth and change at the city scale. The result is a complex and uneven landscape of public and private actors delivering financial services, scaling-up supply chains, coordinating firm networks, diffusing process and material innovations, and organizing new forms of civic representation and participation.

 This conference provides a platform for researchers to address the effects of these policy, organizational, and institutional innovations and their impact on work, identity, governance, production networks, infrastructure investments, technology diffusion, and ultimately place. The conference will focus on the policy implications of emerging forms of governance and policy delivery relative to uneven development and inequality in a post-crisis era of ongoing market liberalization, financialization, and global competition.

The inter-related processes of industrialization, urbanization, and regional and local development are complex. These processes pose a major challenge for regional policy, firstly for our conceptualizations of regional and urban development and, secondly, for specifying appropriate policy-fixes to provide the conditions for sustainable, smart, and equitable economic growth.

The 2016 RSA North America Conference, in the 51st Year of the Regional Studies Association, is an opportunity to discuss these issues, to chart future research imperatives, and to address concerns and challenges confronting policymakers and practitioners. The conference organizers are keen to attract papers and sessions addressing a broad research and policy agenda, including contributions from disciplines that offer relevant insights associated with recasting our cities and regions.

Plenary Speakers

Professor Susan Christopherson, Cornell University, USA 

Professor Matthew Zook, University of Kentucky

Dr. Dieter Kogler, University College Dublin, Ireland 

Professor Robin Leichenko, Rutgers School of Arts & Sciences, USA

Professor Karen Chapple, University of California, Berkeley, USA 

Professor David Rigby, UCLA, USA

The organisers welcome proposals for special sessions, themed workshops and innovative forms of networking and collaboration. 

If you would like to organize or offer a session to the conference please contact Professor Jennifer Clark at: jennifer.clark@gatech.edu

 Abstract submission deadline: Thursday, April 21, 2016

Conference Web site and Registration:
http://www.regionalstudies.org/conferences/conference/rsa-north-american-conf