Nestled against the coast of lake Monona in Madison WI, over 700 scientists and engineers from around the world bustled around the meeting rooms of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Monona Terrace from July 9-13, 2017, for the 21st joint Cryogenic Engineering and International Cryogenic Materials Conferences. On Sunday, many early arrivers took advantage of short courses offering from both ICMC and the Cryogenic Society of America. ICMC focused on topics related to superconductivity—including materials, power electronics engineering and applications—while CSA instructors covered safety, thermal properties, cryocoolers and design of optimal helium refrigeration and liquefaction systems.

The conference began in earnest on Monday morning. Dr. Nateri Madavan, from NASA Ames Research Center, gave the first plenary, exploring the agency’s vision for the future of aviation. Included were plans to use cryogenic technology to address the fuel consumption of 100+ passenger aircraft. Richard Riley, business development manger at Highview Power Storage, addressed the conference on Tuesday, discussing the companies advances in LAES power storage. The system, he says, is beneficial for energy systems that need assistance with peak distribution and can be rapidly and cost effectively expanded with the simple addition of more tanks.

Ronald Bliesner, a fluid systems design engineer for Blue Origin, spoke on Wednesday. There were few new revelations from the the notorious secretive company, but Bliesner did hold the audience’s attention with design presentations, information of how the company plans to facilitate zero gravity experiments on its vessels and quick retorts to Alexa jokes from the audience.

The last plenary came from Dr. Deborah Van Vechten, from the Office of Naval Research, who addressed what production of superconducting electronics requires of the cryocooler community. It was the first time cryogenic microelectronics had been addressed at CEC/ICMC, according to Dr. Deep Gupta, session chair for the talk. “A lot of people don’t know about it yet,” he says, “but if this takes off there will be another 100 or more people from the electronics community who will be attending the conference every year.”

Awards were distributed throughout the week before the plenaries. Among those honored was Dr. Steven Van Sciver, who took home the CEC Samuel C. Collins Award. He says it was quite an honor to be selected and that recognition from his colleagues is something he really values. But his most heartfelt words were for the young people in the audience just beginning their careers. “I’m old enough now where my major technical contribution are beyond me, but to see this group of really bright people continuing to carry that on is what has been probably the most rewarding part of being a professor,” he says. His advice, “find challenging problems and solve them. And don’t give up. It’s critical to devote your energies to it and not just feel like its something to do. It’s not just like a job, it should be something that absorbs you.”

Students like Carl Bunge, a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering at Washington State University, took the message to heart. He attended both the Space Cryogenics Workshop and CEC / ICMC for the first time this year. “The space cryogenics workshop, in conjunction with the Cryogenic Engineering Conference, provided an eye opening experience that allowed me to realize how much work has been done and how much work there is to do in the cryogenics world,” he says. “It’s just really fun to be in this situation and be able to interact with all these people and see what other people have worked on. It allows me to see how I can connect that work to what I’m working on. So, there’s a lot of cross-pollination between different types of ideas in the field and everyone benefits from that. This conference is ground zero for cryogenics.”

And it was also a homecoming for many attendees who had attended the University of Madison. School spirit shined through in trips to the student union for ice cream and in a rousing rendition of the school fight song led by Lance Cooley and the UW Marching Band during the conference welcome dinner. Many of the social events provided a great opportunity for researchers to network with one another and connect with exhibiters in the main hall, which also played host to conference poster sessions. Ravi Bains, founder of Advanced Research Systems (CSA CSM), says the conference is always a great place to reconnect with both clients and industry partners, a sentiment expressed by many in attendance. “The way everything was organized was smooth. It was easy for people to get together and discuss business. It was very well put together conference.”

The conference was especially important to oversees companies looking to establish or reaffirm connections in the US market. “It’s an effort for us to cross the ocean all of the time, but it’s an opportunity to meet so many people at the same place,” says Ute Probst, marketing at communications at Linde Kryotechnik AG. “We would have to travel a lot to reach them all and here we can meet them all at the same place and talk about interesting projects, or questions they have to us. For us, its saving time to come here and to meet all interested people.”

Other vendors were attending for the first time, including Paul Larochelle, COO at Tempshield Cryo-Protection (CSA CSM). “We continue to look to educate the industry on our products and this has been a beneficial venue to speak with end users,” he says. “We’ve had some great conversations with a lot of students, professors and industry representatives.”

Norplex Micarta, a manufacturer of high performance thermoset composite materials, also attended for the first time. “We’re very impressed with the attendance and the knowledge of the attendees of our materials,” says Jerry Regan, marketing specialist. “It was good foot traffic to the booth. We met a lot of interesting people. Lots of new contacts. Lots of people in the education fields that maybe will spec our materials as they do design work.”
The 22nd CEC / ICMC will occur July 21-25, 2019, in Hartford Connecticut at the Connecticut Convention Center. Information will be posted on http://www.cec-icmc.org/ when available.