The Annual Meeting of the International Graduate Research Training Group in Self Assembly of Soft Matter Near Interfaces (IRTG) hosted by NC State was held in Wilmington, North Carolina on October 7-10, 2015. The IRTG is a program of international research cooperation spearheaded by faculty at the Technical University of Berlin with investigators from Humboldt University and the Max Planck Institute for Colloid and Interface Science.
The German Science Foundation (DFG) supports the IRTG. NC State faculty including Keith Gubbins, Carol Hall, Jan Genzer, Orlin Velev, Richard Spontak, Michael Dickey, Stefan Franzen, Melissa Pasquinelli and Hanna Gracz have had a long affiliation with IRTG , exchanging students and holding meetings each year to discuss new directions. The research emanating from the IRTG cooperation is expected to lead to the development of new soft-matter based materials with applications in drug delivery, electronics, and sensors. Approximately 33 faculty members (18 German and 15 US) and 33 graduate students (22 Germany and 11 US) participated in the meeting.
Related outputs include 59 publications including 12 submitted or in print as well as two patents granted, three provisional, and two licenses. Support for this initiative is also coming from the College of Engineering and the Office of Research, Innovation, and Economic Development.