The field of complex fluids is a rapidly developing, highly
interdisciplinary field that brings together people from a
plethora of backgrounds such as mechanical engineering, chemical
engineering, materials science, applied mathematics, physics,
chemistry and biology. In this melting pot of science, the
traditional boundaries of various scientific disciplines have been
set aside. It is this very property of the field that has
guaranteed its richness and prosperity since the final decade of
the 20th century and into the 21st.
The C3 Commission of the International Union of Pure and Applied
Physics (IUPAP), which is the commission for statistical physics
that organizes the international STATPHYS conferences, encourages
various, more focused, satellite meetings to complement the main
event. For the STATPHYS22 conference in Bangalore (July 2004),
Iran was recognized by the STATPHYS22 organizers as suitable to
host such a satellite meeting and the Institute for
Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences (IASBS) was chosen to be the
site of this meeting. It was decided to organize a meeting in the
field of complex fluids, which is a fairly developed field in
Iran. This international meeting, and an accompanying summer
school, were intended to boost international connections for both the
research groups working in Iran, and several other groups working
in the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa.
The meeting, entitled `Statistical Physics of Complex Fluids'
was held at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences
(IASBS) in Zanjan, Iran, from 27 June to 1 July 2004. The main
topics discussed at the meeting included: biological
statistical physics, wetting and microfluidics, transport
in complex media, soft and granular matter, and rheology
of complex fluids. At this meeting, 22 invited lectures by
eminent scientists were attended by 107 participants from
different countries. The poster session consisted of 45
presentations which, in addition to the main topics of the
meeting, covered some of the various areas in statistical physics
currently active in Iran. About half of the participants came from
countries other than Iran, with a relatively broad geographic distribution.
The meeting benefited greatly from the excellent administrative
assistance of the conference secretary Ms Ashraf Moosavi and the
IASBS staff. We are grateful to Professor Yousef Sobouti, the
Director of IASBS, and Professor Reza Mansouri, the Head of the
Physical Society of Iran, for their support. We also thank the
organizers of STATPHYS22, Professor Rahul Pandit and his
colleagues, for their suggestions and support. The conference was
supported by donations from the Center for International Research
and Collaboration (ISMO) and the Institute for Research and
Planning in Higher Education (IRPHE) of the Iranian Ministry of
Science, Research and Technology, the Islamic Development Bank,
the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics
(ICTP), the Tehran Cluster Office of the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the
Research and Development Directorate of the National Iranian Oil
Company, the Physical Society of Iran, the Iranian Meteorological
Organization, and the Zanjan City Water and Waste Water Company.
Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to Institute
of Physics Publishing, and in particular to Professor Alexei
Kornyshev and Dr Richard Palmer for suggesting publishing the
proceedings of the meeting and carrying through the editorial
processes with the utmost efficiency.
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