Message From the Chairman of the Organizing Committee
Time flies. The human race has safely stridden into Year 2000, throwing the
"millennium bug" scare in the back of our mind. The Institute of Materials (East
Asia) proudly enters its 8th annual conference year. Since it is also the first
in the new century and new millennium, we affectionately call it our "Millennium
Conference". Welcome to the Millennium Conference!
From Stone Age to Bronze Age, Iron Age, the most modern IT Age and probably a Bio Age in the new century, materials advancement was, is and will still be playing a vital role in human civilization. While conventional iron & steel still function as the backbone in structuring the world, polymeric materials, electronics materials, biomaterials, coatings… have been added to the list and play ever increasing roles in modern societies.
What materials will dominate the new millennium? What are the advances to expect in materials development (both processing and characterization) in the new century? These are the questions materials people ponder and interest even the general public. That is why the theme "Advanced Materials For the New Millennium" is adopted for the conference.
To address some of these questions, we have keynote presentations on advances and prospects of nanomaterials and invited talk on the materials aspect of MEMS. Other talks invited also to cast light include Near-field Spectroscopy, Step-Scan FTIR, Scanning Electron Acoustic Microscopy, Quantitative determination of microstructure… just to name a few.
Before I leave the dais to the speakers, I would like to take this opportunity to register my gratitude to all who make the conference a reality. My heartfelt appreciation goes to all the speakers for their time and effort. My sincere gratitude goes to all the sponsors for their generosity in supporting the conference especially in the wake of the barely past economic crisis. My thanks also go to the leadership of Associate Professors Michael Khor and Peter Hing, and to the hard work of the members of the organizing committee. I'd also like to thank Ms Ng Siu Din, secretary to the Advanced Materials Research Center, for her valuable assistance.
Thank you all for coming. Enjoy the conference!
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Associate Professor Sam Zhang
Chairman, Organizing Committee
24 March 2000