NAMS 2004 conference report
SCI Messel Travel Bursary
Winner Mr Muhammad G Dastgir
 SCI
Member Muhammad Dastgir visited Hawaii in June 2004 to attend
a conference on membrane materials. He studies at Imperial
College, London, and received a Messel Bursary for his trip.
He draws on his experiences at the event here.
I have recently attended the NAMS (North American Membrane
Society) 2004 conference which was held in Sheraton Waikiki
Honolulu Hawaii USA from 26-30 June 2004. This conference
was mainly about the development, modification and current
and future applications of membrane materials. The conference
opened with a plenary lecture by a representative from GKSS
and each session started with key note lectures from a well
known scientist in that particular area. I presented my research
paper "the development of stabilized supported liquid membranes
for the Membrane Aromatic recovery System'' on 30th of June
in the session '"novel concept in wastewater treatment
II".
My talk was mainly related with the development of improved
membranes which are both stable and highly permeable under
Membrane Aromatic Recovery system (MARS) operating conditions.
The MARS commercial application and its comparison with other
existing technologies were presented. The possibility of using
composite membranes and supported liquid membranes on the
basis of current investigations was discussed. The future
research directions were set out to overcome existing problems.
Attending the NAMS (North American Membrane Society) 2004
conference (www.membranes.org)
offered me the opportunity to attend my first major conference.
It provided me a chance to discuss the problems and progress
of my research work with more experienced and learned scientists
in the field of membrane science. It also provided me the
opportunity of understanding how my research work fits in
to a wider research context. The chance to present my work
to an international audience was quite helpful in developing
my presentation skills. Receiving constructive feedback from
other researchers in the field will be useful for my future
research, by getting to know in more depth the work of other
researchers in the field, and seeing how they solve the common
problems in this research area. The networking with others
will hopefully provide ideas not only for my future but also
for other members of my research group.
Some of the presentations were very interesting and could
provide new ideas and research directions for our research
group. For example, the talk on dispersion of polyethylene
in PDMS could provide impetus for the MARS group which is
working with cross linking of polypropylene glycol. Similarly,
Talks on nanofiltration with functionalised membranes at low
pressure could be interesting for our nano membranes group.
Finally, I would like to thank the ''SCI'' for its financial
support which made this expensive trip feasible and provided
me with the opportunity to attend and present my research
work at this major international conference which gave me
confidence and future research direction and the stay in Hawaii
was also wonderful and memorable.
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