Greetings! I hope this newsletter finds you and your families and friends healthy and safe. The Combustion Institute office has undergone a number of changes since our last newsletter, which pale in comparison to the existence and impact of COVID-19. As we all adjust to our new routines, The Combustion Institute staff remains available to you. Please feel free to reach out to us by email at office@combustioninstitute.org, info@combustioninstitute.org, or renny@combustioninstitute.org.

As you may be aware by now, the 38^th International Symposium on Combustion has been postponed to January 2021. After in-depth consideration for the health and safety of authors and presenters, as well as a desire to ensure maximum participation from all sections, The Combustion Institute Board of Directors has approved the recommendation to delay the Symposium to 24-29 January 2021 in Adelaide, Australia. The health and safety of our members and colleagues is our primary concern. We hope the delay will allow members to attend, free of health concerns, and to enjoy the company of friends and colleagues, and an exceptional technical program. Early-bird registration has been extended to 8 November 2020 to encourage members to register as soon as restrictions are lifted.

 

We would like to offer our gratitude for the time and work the organizers, authors, Program Co-Chairs, Colloquium Co-Chairs and Coordinators, reviewers, and others have invested. We are confident that the Symposium will maintain the high standards and enjoyment you have come to expect from the International Symposium on Combustion. You can visit the 38^th Symposium website for frequent updates.

While the Symposium has been postponed to January 2021, many other events are proceeding on schedule including the Board of Directors meeting, Board of Director Elections, and Award decisions. Continue reading for more information.

Wishing you all health and safety as you navigate these unprecedented times,

~Renny Tassari, Acting Executive Administrator

2020 Class of Fellows
The 2020 Fellows of The Combustion Institute have been named. The selection committee elected 27 exceptional honorees. As dedicated members of the international combustion community, each Fellow has made outstanding contributions to the discipline of combustion science in research or in application.

2020 Hiroshi Tsuji Early Career Researcher Award Winners 
The Combustion Institute and Elsevier, with the assistance of an award committee, have selected two members to receive the annual Hiroshi Tsuji Early Career Researcher Award. This year’s winners are Zheng Chen and Michael Gollner. Read more about the Tsuji Award here.

Research Excellence Award
Congratulations to the 2020 Recipients of The Research Excellence Award. The Research Excellence Award of The Combustion Institute is given to registered CI members who, in the opinion of the Executive Committee, have published excellent research papers that have had a major impact on the field of combustion science. 

Board of Directors Election 
The election for the Board of Directors will be held from 1-30 June 2020. Only registered members of The Combustion Institute are eligible to vote in the election. If you have any questions about your membership, please contact your Section Chair or office@combustioninstitute.org.

Call for Photos and Videos to Share on Instagram

Event Delays
Due to travel restrictions and safety concerns raised by COVID-19, a number of events have been postponed or cancelled. Please visit the Events page of our website for the most up-to-date information. If you have delayed or cancelled your event, please contact office@combustioninstitute.org so we can publicize the change on the CI website.

2020 Online Course - Fundamentals of Thermo-Acoustic Instabilities
CERFACS has announced a 2020 session of their internet course "Fundamentals of Thermo-Acoustic Instabilities." The course will start on 4 May and end on 29 May 2020. Coupling between acoustic waves and flames has become a central issue in the development of many modern combustion systems, and this course presents the theoretical background needed to tackle such problems. More details can be found here. 

Symposium Update

Due to health and safety concerns related to COVID-19, the 38th International Symposium has been postponed to 24-29 January 2021. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused, but have faith in the combustion community to withstand these challenging times and gather for another successful symposium. Please continue to visit the symposium website for the most up-to-date information.

Program Planning Week
During the week of 24-28 February, the Program Co-Chairs, CI President, and Acting Executive Administrator met to review the colloquia team ranking results and finalize the details of the technical program for the 38th Symposium. Tim Liewen, Jim Driscoll and Renny Tassari met on the University of Southern California Campus under gracious arrangements made by Fokion Egolfopoulos. Many thanks to Program Co-Chair, Fei Qi, who was unable to attend in person due to travel restrictions, but participated by video conferencing during the middle of the night his time. 

Over 1770 submissions were received for consideration and a record number of 709 were accepted. The increased number of presentations has lead to the addition of an 11th parallel session. We hope to have a draft program available to assist in travel planning by the end of July.

Additional Updates

• Registration is now open and the Early Bird discount has been extended to 8 November 2020. We encourage all members to take advantage of the discount and to show their support of the combustion community by registering early. 
• If you have already completed your Affirmation to Present there is no need to update it unless there is a new presenter. If there are changes, or if you have not completed your affirmation yet, the deadline has been extended to 24 September 2020.
• Those needing Visas may want to start the internal approval processes early but delay applying to Australian Immigration until later in the year. Find more information on the different types of visas and requirements here. 
• Submissions for Work-in-Progress Posters (WiPP) are open and the deadline has been extended to 21 October 2020. Please visit the WiPP Presentation Instruction page on the Symposium website for more information.

PROCI Progress

All papers accepted for presentation at the Symposium will proceed for consideration for publication as planned. The Editors and Associate Editors are hard at work mastering the review process. Authors can expect to receive updates soon.

2019 Distinguished Paper Award (DPA) in the Diagnostics Colloquium
Congratulations to Wen Yu Peng, Séan J. Cassady, Christopher L. Strand, Christopher S. Goldenstein, R. Mitchell Spearrin, Christopher M. Brophy, Jay B. Jeffries and Ronald K. Hanson for winning the DPA in the Diagnostics colloquium. Their authoritative paper,  Single-ended mid-infrared laser-absorption sensor for time-resolved measurements of water concentration and temperature within the annulus of a rotating detonation engine, has furthered research on specialized measurement devices to fundamentally understand how well experimental rotating detonation engine prototypes are performing relative to what is theoretically possible. Read more about their study here.

2019 Distinguished Paper Award (DPA) in the Detonations, Explosions, and Supersonic Combustion Colloquium
Congratulations to Jonathan Sosa, Jessica Chambers, Kareem A. Ahmed, Alexei Poludnenko, and Vadim N. Gamezo for winning the DPA in the Detonations, Explosions, and Supersonic Combustion colloquium. Their authoritative paper, Compressible turbulent flame speeds of highly turbulent standing flames,  has advanced research in the area of propulsion engine performance and efficient power generation in next generation technologies like rotating detonation engines. Read more about their study here.

Paul Laffitte and Gérard de Soete Award
Every two years, two awards are bestowed by the Groupement Français de Combustion (French section of the Combustion Institute) to the best PhD works accomplished in French combustion laboratories during that time period. The Paul Laffitte prize recognizes remarkable accomplishments in the field of fundamental combustion. It is named after the founder of the Groupement Français de Combustion. The Gérard de Soete prize recognizes outstanding work in the field of Combustion, in relation to industrial or applicative aspects of combustion. It is named after the first president of the French section. The 2020 prizes have been awarded to Paul Laffitte prize: Basile Radisson (IRPHE, Marseille) for his manuscript entitled "Dynamique non linéaire de fronts de flammes: expériences et modélisation" and Gérard de Soete prize: Pedro Rodrigues (EM2C, Paris) for his manuscript entitled "Modélisation multiphysique de flammes turbulentes suitées avec la prise en compte des transferts radiatifs et des transferts de chaleur pariétaux." 

New progress in turbulent combustion modeling: Filtered flamelet model

Recently, CI Member Jian Zhang from the Institute of Mechanics, CAS alongside Lipo Wang’s group from Shanghai Jiao Tong University proposed a new modeling idea for turbulent diffusion flame. The new model has yielded results that agree with the experimental data, proving it a success. Read more here.

 

Understanding combustion

In her article, Mary Beth Gallagher reports that MIT Assistant Professor and CI Member Sili Deng is working toward understanding the chemistry and flow that interacts in combustion in an effort to improve technologies for current or near-future energy conversion applications. Along with her team at the Deng Energy and Nanotechnology Group at MIT, she hopes that understanding chemically reacting flow in the combustion process will result in new strategies to control the process of combustion and reduce or eliminate the soot generated in combustion. Read more about Deng's work here. 

Encyclopedia of Wildland Fires and Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Fires Completed

At the invitation of Springer Nature, CI Member Samuel Manzello was asked to develop an encyclopedia about Wildland Fires and Wildland-Urban Interface and serve as the Editor in Chief (EiC). Manzello and his team of section editors, which include four CI Members Michael Gollner, Sara McAllister, Sayaka Suzuki, and Kuibin Zhou, worked together to produce the first edition of the encyclopedia which contains 171 contributions, written by nearly 200 authors from all over the globe. Such a resource is a helpful tool for CI members to become familiar with wildland fires and WUI fires. Read more about their achievement here.