Season’s Greetings From the InterPore President

Dear InterPore colleagues,

As our minds and hearts turn to the past year, we dream of our hopes and goals for the next. The pandemic has affected us all, disrupting “normal” operating procedures and requiring us to embark on new methods of teaching, learning, collaborating and doing business. Therefore, we are thankful for the strong support of the InterPore community that has enabled us to remain connected throughout the year. Most notable was InterPore’s 1st Virtual Symposium held at the end of August with over 767 participants and 624 presentations. Because the scope and timeline of the pandemic’s path is unknown, we will work in the coming months to refine our Virtual platform for InterPore 2021, which will be the 2nd Virtual Symposium and the 13th Annual Meeting (31 May – 04 June 2021).

We also give our heartfelt thanks to our many members for their active participation in the community and in standing and new committees. The executive committee has established a Financial Committee, with chair Pal-Eric Oren, and members Michael Celia and Veronika Schleper, to oversee and guide financial issues of InterPore to ensure its financial stability especially during the current volatile financial climate.

We are also pleased to announce the establishment of an online “Academy of Porous Media”, overseen by Oleg Iliev and supported by Reza Soltanian and Sadegh Riasi, to promote educational activities by hosting short courses and webinars related to porous media to serve new members of the broad porous media community (see the website).

The National Chapter Committee, led by Didier Lasseux, was created this year to provide a central communication point between the chapters and InterPore. InterPore now has 16 National Chapters. We are pleased to welcome new National Chapters from Spain and Saudi Arabia. National Chapters are an important forum for countries to form networks among their industrial, government and academic members, and to act as a conduit to the broader international porous-media community. InterPore welcomes the formation of new state, regional or national chapters. Please do not hesitate to contact InterPore for assistance in forming a chapter.

The InterPore Foundation, led by Steffen Berg, will start its 5th year of activities related to education and promotion of porous media. Prior to the formulation of a vaccine, the 1st line of defense during the pandemic is a porous medium—a “face mask” worn to minimize exposure to COVID-19. The foundation held a competition for graduate students entitled “Innovative Ideas to Design and/or Improve Facemasks against Airborne Bacteria and Viruses”. The winner was Seyyed Aku Ghoreishyfrom the Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Department, University of Calgary, Canada with “Nature-driven designs for the new generation of self-cleaning face masks“. Check the winning proposal (2 MB) for more details.

The foundation maintained the Kimberly-Clark distinguished lectureship series during the pandemic through online presentations that enabled more members to attend. The 1st winner, Basant Yadav, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, of a new award the “Rien van Genuchten Early Career Award for a Green World” was announced at the Virtual Annual Symposium. The Foundation announces two renamed awards “The InterPore Award for Porous Media Research” and the “InterPore Medal for Porous Media Research”. More information on these awards can be found at the InterPore foundation website. Please consider nominating your colleagues for these and other InterPore awards.

The Foundation saw an increase in donations this year. As you know, the Foundation supports scientists from low-income countries and students with conference grants to enable broader participation in the conferences as well as to help address pressing global needs related to the pandemic, and to clean water and air. With InterPore’s technical expertise, we as a community clearly have contributions to make to these and other challenges facing humanity that include health, water, energy and food security. The InterPore Foundation needs the help of our members and donations to support participation of young scientists from the countries that will likely be the most affected by the consequences of these security challenges.

Finally, a round of applause for the InterPore Executive Officer, Karolin Weber and staff Kristy Lutz, Amy Spang, Sebastian Riedel and Meghan McCarroll, who worked tirelessly in the support of the 1st Virtual Symposium and throughout year on the needs of the community.

I look forward to the time when we can all meet again in person to learn new things, not only from presentations, but through serendipitous conversations in hallways and over meals.

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less”. ― Marie Curie

Wishing you the best for the Holiday Season and Happy, Healthy New Year!

Stay safe,
Laura J. Pyrak-Nolte
President of InterPore