Reported by Shihao Li & Pingjiong Yang

The 2017 MRS Spring Meeting was held in Phoenix, April 17-21. Prof. Weizhong Han, from CAMP-Nano, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University led the organization of the NM9 symposium on High-Performance Metals and Alloys in Extreme Conditions in the 2017 MRS Spring Meeting. Technological advances in the areas of nuclear systems, marine platforms, microelectronics, and aerospace applications, amongst others, are often constrained by limits on the performance of metals and alloys in these application environments. Aiming at investigating the application problems and frontier academic issues that plague advanced metal and alloys materials, symposium on high-performance metals and alloys in extreme conditions was organized specially to promote academic exchanges.  

The symposium focuses on microstructure and properties of high-performance metals and alloys in extreme conditions, including materials properties at micro/nano scale, radiation damage, severe plastic deformation, stress corrosion cracking, superalloys and so on. Scientists all around the world were invited to give presentations in this symposium. These invited speakers are Gary S. Was from University of Michigan, Sergei Dudarev from UK Atomic Energy Authority, Augus Wilkinson from University of Oxford, Amit Misra from University of Michigan, Andrew Minor from University of California, Berkeley, Eugen Rabkin from Technion, Israel, Michael Mills from The Ohio State University, Xinghang Zhang from Purdue University, Daniel Gianola from University of California Santa Barbara, Jian Wang from Univeisity of Nebraska-Lincoln, Prof. Zhiwei Shan from Xi’an Jiaotong University and so on. In addition, postdoctors and PhD students from different research institutions attended this symposium and gave some oral presentations. Many wonderful presentations in this symposium attracted attendees from other symposiums and were appreciated widely. A welcome reception was organized for all invited speakers of the symposium on April 18th. In addition, the Best Presentation Award and the Best Poster Award were established to encourage graduate students to attend international conference. 

Aiming at advancing materials and improving the quality, the 2017 MRS Spring Meeting attracted more than 5000 attendees from all over the world. More symposiums focusing on advanced structural metal materials will be organized in MRS Spring Meeting to attract more attendees.