The Materials Science & Technology 2024 Conference & Exhibition took place in the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from October 6 to 9, 2024. Pittsburgh is known as “The City of Bridges” and “The Steel City” for its many bridges and former steel manufacturing base. The characteristic shape of downtown is a triangular region formed by the confluence of the Monongahela River and the Allegheny River, which merge to produce the Ohio River. In 2007, Pittsburgh was named “America’s Most Livable City” by Places Rated Almanac. This year, many conference attendees were fortunate to have hotel rooms with a spectacular view of the rivers and bridges.

Situated on the banks of the Allegheny River in downtown Pittsburgh, the elegant, spacious, and innovative David L. Lawrence Convention Center offers over 30,000 sq. ft. of exhibition space. The Convention Center is the first certified “green” Convention Center in the US that features natural ventilation, natural daylighting, water conservation and energy efficiency.

The MS&T 2024 Conference had a total of more than 3000 attendees. The organizing committee and program team successfully brought together the world’s leading experts in materials science and technology. The 2024 conference committee chairs were TMS Representatives John Carpenter (Los Alamos National Laboratory), Eric Lass (University of Tennessee, Knoxville), 2024 ACerS Representative Matthew Dickerson (Air Force Research Laboratory), and 2024 AIST Representative Mario Buchely (Missouri University of Science & Technology).

The MS&T 2024 Conference is the leading forum addressing structure, properties, processing, and performance across the materials community. The conference featured the American Ceramic Society (ACerS) 126^th Annual meeting, the AIST Steel Properties & Applications Conference, and the TMS Fall Meeting. These organizing societies provided MS&T24 with 81 symposia organized into 13 themes: (1) Additive Manufacturing (14 symposia); (2) Artificial Intelligence (5 symposia); (3) Biomaterials (6 symposia); (4) Ceramics and Glass Materials (10 symposia); (5) Fundamental and Characterization (8 symposia); (6) Iron and Steel (Ferrous Alloys) (6 symposia); (7) Light Weight Alloys (5 symposia); (8) Materials-Environment Interactions (5 symposia); (9) Modeling (2 symposia); (10) Nanomaterials (3 symposia); (11) Nuclear Energy (4 symposia); (12) Processing and Manufacturing (2 symposia); and (13) Sustainability, Energy, and the Environment (11 symposia). In addition, there were five special topics: (1) 2024 Graduate Student Poster Contest; (2) 2024 Undergraduate Student Poster Contest; (3) Honorary Symposium on the celebration of Professor Michel Barsoum’s 70^th Birthday; (4) Ignite MSE: Thinking Outside the Lab, and (5) Scientific Methods in Art, Archeology, and Art Conservation Science. Over 1000 papers were presented at the conference in either parallel oral sessions or poster presentations.

A number of memorable plenary talks took place at the meeting. The keynote and lectures included the Frontiers of Science and Society: Rustum Roy Lecture (“Proposal of Oxide Ceramic LSI Device for Putting the Brakes on Global Warming Accelerated by AI-age Computers” by Shunpei Yamazaki of Semiconductor Energy Laboratory Co. Ltd.), TMS/ASM Distinguished Lecture (“Saving the Planet through Sustainability-Informed Selection, Design, and Discovery of Materials,” by Julie M. Schoenung of Texas A&M University), ACerS/EPDC Arthur L. Friedberg Ceramic Engineering Tutorial and Lecture (by Olivia Graeve of University of California, San Diego), ACerS Edward Orton Jr. Memorial Lecture (“Silicon Carbide: The Versatile Ceramic Alloy” by Young-Wook Kim of Worldex Industry & Trading Co., Ltd., Korea), AIST Adolf Martens Memorial Steel Lecture (“Thin-Slab Continuous Strip Processing Technology-Changing the Landscape of How We Make Greener and Leaner Advanced High-Strength Steels,” by Amar K. De of Big River Steel), ACerS Alfred R. Cooper Award (recipient was Heike Ebendorff-Heidepriem of The University of Adelaide), and the Robert B. Sosman Lecture (“The Role of Computational Modeling of Complex Materials” by Wai-Yim Ching of the University of Missouri-Kansas City).

As students are critical to the future of the organization, MS&T scheduled a series of student activities to ensure that these young people have opportunities to be recognized among their peers, to mingle with each other, and with other well-established scientists, to learn leadership skills, and to learn about career development. These activities included Material Advantage Chapter Office Workshop, Undergraduate Student Speaking Contest, Undergraduate Student Poster Contest, Graduate Student Poster Contest, Ceramic Mug Drop Contest, Ceramic Disc Golf Contest, Student Awards Ceremony, Student Networking Reception, IGNITE MSE: Thinking Outside the Lab, AIST Student Plant Tour, Student Resume Coaching Workshop, Navigating U.S. Immigration: Overcoming a Barrier for Materials Professionals Workshop, and AIST Foundation Steel to Students Recruiting Reception.

The large–scale exhibit is always a popular and important part of the MS&T Conference that compliments the scientific program (Figure 1). This year, there were a total of 87 exhibitors displaying their latest products and services. International exhibitors included materials producers, analytical equipment manufacturers, book and journal publishers, database and software producers, scientific societies, scientific consultants, and sponsor companies. The exhibit hall was a popular place to meet up with friends and colleagues and meet new people. Members often strolled along different aisles to learn about new products, obtain information, chat with manufacturers, pick up souvenirs, participate in new product demonstrations, and browse through new publications. The International Center for Diffraction Data (ICDD) had an informative exhibit booth (Figure 2). Student poster sessions also took place at the exhibit hall (Figure 3).

Other special events included ACerS 126^th Annual Membership Meeting, MS&T Partners’ All Conference Reception: Celebrating Our Materials Community and Its Diversity (Sponsored by GE Aerospace Research), MS&T LGBTQ+ and Allies Reception, ACerS Basic Science Division Ceramographic Exhibit & Competition, AIST Steel Students Reception, ACerS Annual Honor and Awards Banquet, Austenite Symposium Dinner in Memory of Mats Hillert, and Networking Reception Hosted by The Graphene Council.

All in all, based on attendance, breadth of topics, strength of presentations, and scope of the exhibition the conference was a great success. In the future, material scientists can look forward to meetings co-sponsored by ACerS, including the 16^th Pacific Rim Conference on Ceramic & Glass Technology (PACRIM) which will take place in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada from May 4 to May 9, 2025; the 2025 Structural Clay Products Division & Southwest Section Meeting in Conjunction with the National Brick Research Center Meeting June 9–11, 2025 in Birmingham AL, 16^th Advances in Cement Based Materials June 11–13, 2025 in the University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, and the next MS&T Conference and Exhibition which will take place in Columbus, OH from September 28 to October 1, 2025.

Figure 1.

The Exhibition Hall.

Figure 2.

The ICDD booth, (from left to right): Maj Cole, Winnie Wong-Ng, and Anja Viera Dosen.

Figure 3.

The student poster exhibit.