Liquids in Complex Environments, Driving Reactions, Assembling and Pushed to Their Limits

What is unique about liquids, that they have their own GRC since 1957? Liquids are at once omnipresent – "water, water, everywhere" – and naturally rare (can you name liquids, beyond water and oil, that naturally occur on Earth?). The very existence of liquids hinges on a delicate balance between intermolecular attractions that impede vaporization and entropy that prevents crystallization. This balance gives liquids their many faces: they are cohesive, yet fluid; disordered, yet structured. They can display significant heterogeneities in time and in space. Properties of liquids are determined by their multiplicity of configurations and fluctuations. Research in liquids is continuously expanded by applications that pose novel fundamental questions and challenges in materials, energy, medicine, geology and the environmental sciences.

The 2019 conference will reflect the modern frontiers of liquids research, featuring the most recent developments about liquid interfaces, self-organization, solvation, reactivity, chiral and ionic liquids, vitrification, dynamics, spectroscopy, and liquids out of equilibrium and under extreme conditions. A diverse group of globally renown and emerging leaders will present talks that emphasize new fundamental insights obtained with state-of-the-art experimental and computational methods and theories, and discuss their implications in materials, energy, biology, and the environment. Talks will not only answer questions at the current forefront of the field, but also elicit discussions and ideas that will define its future directions.

The Gordon Conference on the Chemistry and Physics of Liquids brings together a thriving community of chemists, physicists, engineers, biophysicists and material scientists to share cutting-edge unpublished scientific research, with abundant time for discussion of new concepts and directions, and an informal and collegial atmosphere that fosters opportunities for collaborations and networking. All participants are encouraged to present their research in the poster sessions, the heart and collective brain of the conference.

Eight short talks will be selected from abstracts submitted by June 1st. An additional three short talks by students and postdocs will be selected from the two-day Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) that precedes the conference. The GRS is organized by and for graduate students and postdocs, and it provides an outstanding opportunity for young researchers to build informal networks with their peers.