We are living in the golden age of fluid dynamics. The reasons are that (i) Moore's law is kept on being followed for the computational power, now making simulations possible of which even ten years ago we did not dare to dream on, and (ii) a similar revolution (for the same reason) in digital high-speed imaging, now being able to routinely resolved the millisecond time scale and even smaller scales, revealing new physics on these scales which up to now was unaccessible. With both together, the gap between what can be measured and what can be ab-initio simulated is more quickly closing than we had anticipated at the end of the last century.
Also other gaps are closing: Fluid is bridging out to various neighboring disciplines such as chemistry and in particular colloidal science, catalysis, electrolysis, medicine, biology, computational science, and many others. Here the techniques, approaches and traditions from fluid dynamics can offer a lot to help to solve outstanding problems - vice versa, these fields can offer wonderful questions to fluid dynamics.
Academic fluid dynamics is also bridging out not only to traditional applications on large scales such as in chemical engineering, in the food industry, or in geophysics, but also to various new high-tech applications, be it in inkjet printing, immersion and XUV lithography, chemical diagnostics, lab-on-a-chip, and organ-on-a-chip.
The objective of the 4-day symposium is to exchange views on the future development of fluid dynamics. The speakers will be nearly exclusive young fluid dynamicists from all over the world, showing their latest results and giving their views on the future developments.
Detlef Lohse