The 4th Pacific Rim Conference on Rheology Achieved a Complete Success

The 4th Pacific Rim Conference on Rheology (PRCR 4) was successfully held on August 7-11, 2005 at Purple Mountain Hotel in Pudong of Shanghai. Professor Ruo Yingshe, director of the Chinese Rheology Commission under Chinese Chemical Society (CCS) and Chinese Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (CTAM), and the supervisor of Ph.D. students in our university’s Fundamental Mechanics and Material Engineering Institute, served as the conference’s chairman. The conference is sponsored by the Chinese Rheology Commission of CCTM and CCS, and co-organized by Xiangtan University, East China University of Science and Technology, Fudan University, China University of Petroleum (Beijing), Langfang Branch of China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., and the Journal of Applied Rheology. It received financial supports from National Nature Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and China Association of Science & Technology (CAST). The whole conference is composed by 4 special reports, 28 theme reports, 156 specific topic reports and 30 wall exhibition reports, and has achieved a complete success.
The conference is the international rheology conference of the largest scale and highest level that is ever held in China. It has received 331 dissertations, among which 253, after reviewing by domestic and international experts and revisions by the authors, have been adopted into the dissertation volume, which will be published by the Science Press U.S.A. Inc. There are in total 230 attendees, among whom 107 are from the U.S. (15), Russia (3), Australia (1), Canada (1), Japan (28), Mexico (7), Korea (16), Germany (6), England (2), Czech (1), France (1), Iran (1), Italy (1), Poland (1), Singapore (1), Slovenia (1), Switzerland (3) as well as their companions (15). Among the 123 Chinese guests, 4 were from Taiwan, 2 from Hong Kong, while 16 from our university. Among the foreign guests, 4 are chief editors of international journals. They are: Professor H. Henning Winter, Chief Editor of Rheologica Acta (USA), Professor Gareth H. Mckinley, Chief Editor of Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics (USA), and Professor Peter Fischer, Chief Editor of Journal of Applied Rheology (Switzerland). Among the dissertation authors and conference attendees, there are 8 academicians at home and abroad. They are: Professor Ken Walters (U.K.) and Professor Roger I. Tanner (Australia) of British Royal Society, Professor A. YA. Malkin from Russian Academy of Science, Professor Chirs Macosko from the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, Professor Xu Xi (Sichuang University), Professor Sunjun (Tongji University), and Professor Yang Wei (Tsinghua University) from China Academy of Science, and Professor Chen Kefu (South China University of Science and Technology) from China Academy of Engineering. Other honorable attendees include chairmen of last three World Rheology Conferences, namely Professor Daniel De Kee (the 12th, U.S.A), Professor Ken Walters (the 13th, U.K.) and Professor Jae Chun Hyun (the 14th, Korea), Professor David F. James (Canada), who has been the Secretary-General of World Rheology Conferences for 16 years, as well as over 20 chairmen of various countries’ rheology conferences.
China has been applying for hosting PRCR since the first Pacific Rim Conference on Rheology (PRCR 1) was held in 1994 in Kyoto of Japan. However, not until on the PRCR 3, which was held in 2001 in Vancouver of Canada, did our application succeed. Consequently, PRCR 4 was successfully held in August 2005 in Shanghai. Therefore, it takes 11 years in total from the first application to the final success. Whether during the conference or after it, both domestic and international attendees gave high praises to the success of the conference. They thought that the conference was held with strict organization, prudent schedule and agenda, high-grade attendees, high-level academic reports and appropriate proportion of Chinese and foreign attendees. The conference has fully demonstrated the research capacity of Chinese rheology field, actively showed Chinese rheology’s development, substantially propagandized Xiangtan University, which is the conference’s foremost organizer and where the conference chairman came, and expanded the influence and reputation of Xiangtan University.