Announcement from the Chairpersons

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers (JSME) have co-developed a successful series of joint conferences on thermal engineering at four-year intervals. AJTEC 2011 is the 8th ASME/JSME Thermal Engineering Joint Conference. The previous conferences in this series were held in: Honolulu, Hawaii (1983 and 1987); Reno, Nevada (1991); Maui, Hawaii (1995); San Diego, California (1999); Hawaii Island, Hawaii (2003); and Vancouver, Canada (2007). AJTEC 2011 will be held again in Honolulu Hawaii.

The Key Themes of AJTEC 2011 are "Fundamental" and "Interdisciplinary" with a vision for the future of Thermal Engineering.

The 20th century is, in many ways symbolized by the phrases "Division" and "Development". In the early part of the century, engineers divided systems into their most fundamental elements for purpose of study. As the century progressed, scientific understanding enabled the enormous development of many new technologies.

In the dawn of the new century, thermal engineers will be required to attain a better understanding of fundamental phenomena governing complex and integrated mechanical, chemical, and energy systems. As such, we must increase our efforts to integrate thermal engineering with other disciplines, and broaden our perspective to include an ever-widening range of time scales (from ultra rapid to long term) and length scales (from nanoscale to global). Such efforts require a strong collective will from the thermal engineering community to engage new technological challenges and to collaborate with scientists and engineers from other disciplines to meet these challenges with unique and innovative solutions. The 21st century has opened the gate for this new direction and the thermal engineering community appears ready and willing to embrace the challenges that lie ahead.

The objective of the AJTEC 2011 conference is to provide an international forum for the exchange of such new ideas and direction as described above and the presentation of the latest work in the field. We strongly encourage attendance and paper submission from sister societies around the globe including those from ASME and JSME.



Koichi Hishida, Keio University, Conference Co-Chair (JSME)
James Klausner, University of Florida, Conference Co-Chair (ASME)
Isao Satoh, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Secretary-General