ICCDU2016 is now in its fourteenth year and the decision has been taken to switch from a biennial to an annual conference based on the growing success and demand for Co2 Utilisation conferences. In this blog post, we’ll be looking at how ICCDU2016 came about and why the increasing demand for development and research in CO2 utilisation has fueled the conference’s growth.
Running for over 20 years, ICCDU started back in 1991 after two Japanese researchers, Kaname Ito and Tomoyuki Inui, decided to organise their own conference in Japan on the new field of CO2 Utilisation. Although it was mainly a gathering of Asian researchers and a few from Europe and the US, it quickly became clear that if the Ito and Inui wanted to capitalise on the interest surrounding their conference and create a scientific community interested in CO2 Utilisation, they would need to run a regular event.
With the help of plenary speaker, Michele Aresta, they organised the first ICCDU event in 1993 at Bari-IT, where 220 scientists from all over the world in the areas of chemical and microbiological science/engineering. The International Scientific Committee of the ICCDU named Michele Aresta their first secretary, who was responsible for organising the conference on a biennial basis across the three geographical areas of America, Asia and Europe. Since the first conference was held in Nagoya, Japan, ICCDU has travelled across the world including Seoul, Oslo and Washington, with its last been held in Singapore.
Since 2013, Michele has stepped down as Chairman, although keeps the role of honorary chairman, and has been replaced by Prof. Chunshan Song from PennState (Chair) and Prof. Angela Dibenedetto from University of Bari as Vice-Chair. 2015 has also seen the switch to turn ICCDU into an annual conference based on the growing number of scientist specialising in the field of Co2 Utilisation and the ever increasing attendance numbers. ICCDUs have always been a place where specialists in the field of CO2 Utilisation can come together and discuss ground breaking ideas and policies. If you’d like to find out more about the history of ICCDU, read Michele’s article here.
Here at ICCDU2016, we hope to follow the trend of bringing scientists from across the world and continue the successes already enjoyed by previous hosts. We look forward to welcoming you in September.
Until next time,
Katy and the admin team.