MRS Communications is committed to engaging and supporting the global materials science community and early-career researchers within the community.

Working with international organizations and scientific meetings, the Materials Research Society (MRS) and Cambridge University Press sponsor a Best Poster Award and conduct workshops throughout Asia. The Best Poster Award is adjudicated and presented by Editor-in-Chief Rigoberto C. Advincula (MRS Communications), who attends the events.

I attended the 16th Polymer Pacific Conference (PPC) in Singapore in December 2019. With over 1,000 attendees, and represented by the Pacific Polymer Federation (PPF) countries which includes the United States, Japan, Korea, China, Singapore, Mexico and others, we had a scientifically stimulating program in polymers and materials. The interaction among the attendees was excellent. This year, as in previous PPC conferences, MRS Communications and Cambridge University Press participated in the Best Poster Awards. This year’s award went to Katherine Riley of Purdue University, who is currently a visiting exchange graduate student at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Her work focuses on new materials and bio-inspired architectures for smart 3D Printing.

Also in December, I attended the inaugural MRS-NUS Materials Workshop. This was the first collaboration on an Advanced and Frontier Materials Workshop between the Materials Research Society and the National University of Singapore (NUS), and was organized by the leadership of MRS Communications. Together, MRS Communications Advisory Board member Suresh Valiyaveetil, who is based at NUS, and I developed the Workshop to highlight materials advances in the areas of biomaterials, 3D printing, polymer synthesis, materials testing, conjugated polymer nanostructures, and sensors. The event was well attended, and we thank the invited speakers for their valuable presentations to the Workshop audience. We look forward to continuing this collaboration in the future!