The International Center for Materials Research (ICMR) at UC Santa Barbara announces a conference on Pressure effects on Materials, which will take place at UC Santa Barbara from August 22-28, 2010.

Pressure is a variable that plays a key role in a large variety of phenomena that range from large scale effects at the interior of planets to small energy scale properties such as quantum critical behavior and a diversity of exotic phase transitions in, for instance, strongly correlated electron materials. With this kick-off conference we would like to bring together scientists working in this field and to provide a forum for intense discussion and examination of the most advanced aspects of the use of high pressure for the investigation of these phenomena. The conference should further help to enhance the exchange between theoreticians and experimentalists and sets the frame for possible long-term workshops.

Topics for the workshop will include:

• Insulator - metal transitions: Mott insulators, quantum critical phenomena
• Pressure effects on frustrated systems
• Synthesis of novel materials at high pressure
• "Simple" systems under extreme conditions
• Superconductivity under pressure
• Ab initio calculations as a tool to investigate pressure effects on materials
• High pressure physics in the interior of planets

For further details, please consult the conference website at http://www.icmr.ucsb.edu/programs/highpressure.html or contact the ICMR Program Coordinator, Jennifer Ybarra, at ybarra@icmr.ucsb.edu