2025 MRS Fall Meeting & Exhibit
Symposium SB10-Design and Development of Novel Gel Materials for Emerging Applications
The symposium will provide an interdisciplinary forum for materials scientists, polymer physicists, chemists, and engineers to exchange ideas and assess the latest developments in the field of polymer networks and gels. Emphasis will be placed on innovative design of conducting polymer/hydrogel synthesis, processing, patterning, and device-level and system-level engineering for broad applications related to life science, energy, and beyond, such as medical wearables, biomimetic devices, tissue engineering, and biological interfacing. Despite recent advances, the synthesis, fabrication, and integration of conducting polymers remain challenging due to the difficulty of combining inherently and mutually exclusive properties, such as high conductivity, balanced mixed-conductivity, stretchability, toughness, and strain stability.
It will be demonstrated that 3D/4D printing can be used in the design and fabrication of advanced functional materials in a customizable way. Novel experimental and theoretical approaches based on sound physical concepts and quantitative measurement methods that allow predictive, model-driven research will be discussed.
An important objective of the symposium is to bring together scientists and engineers whose research involves soft matter science to exchange ideas and promote collaboration. The invited presentations will be given by top researchers in the field. They will review recent developments, outstanding problems and challenges.
It will be demonstrated that 3D/4D printing can be used in the design and fabrication of advanced functional materials in a customizable way. Novel experimental and theoretical approaches based on sound physical concepts and quantitative measurement methods that allow predictive, model-driven research will be discussed.
An important objective of the symposium is to bring together scientists and engineers whose research involves soft matter science to exchange ideas and promote collaboration. The invited presentations will be given by top researchers in the field. They will review recent developments, outstanding problems and challenges.
Topics will include:
- Hydrogels in biomedical applications (controlled drug delivery systems, scaffolds for tissue regeneration, etc.)
- Conducting polymers and hydrogels: synthesis, characterization and application
- Soft conducting polymers/hydrogels with unique properties (healable, stretchable, semiconducting hydrogels)
- Phase transitions in synthetic and biopolymer gels
- Computational and theoretical modeling of gel formation, swelling, and elastic properties
- 3-D printing of gel and biogel constructs
- Smart and programmable hydrogels
- Cell-laden or biohybrid electronics
- Bioinspired and biomimetic gel systems
- Multifunctional biointerfaces
Invited Speakers:
- Zhenan Bao (Stanford University, USA)
- Namita Choudhury (The University of Melbourne, Australia)
- Jack Douglas (National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA)
- Ali Khademhosseini (Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation, USA)
- Dae-Hyeong Kim (Seoul National University, Republic of Korea)
- Stéphanie Lacour (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland)
- Michael Lang (Leibnitz Institute of Polymer Research Dresden, Germany)
- Richard Leapman (National Institutes of Health, USA)
- Wei Lin Leong (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
- Eva Malstrom-Jonsson (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden)
- Ivan Minev (Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research Dresden, Germany)
- Costas Patrickios (University of Cyprus, Cyprus)
- Srinivasa Raghavan (University of Maryland, USA)
- Zhigang Suo (Harvard University, USA)
- Jadranka Travas-Sejdic (The University of Auckland, New Zealand)
- Orlin Velev (North Carolina State University, USA)
- Joost Vlassak (Harvard University, USA)
- Sandra Vlierberghe (Ghent University, Belgium)
- Cunjiang Yu (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)
- Xuanhe Zhao (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
Symposium Organizers
Ferenc Horkay
National Institutes of Health
Section on Quantitative Imaging and Tissue Sciences
USA
Vivian Feig
Stanford University
USA
Marc in het Panhuis
University of Wollongong
Department of Materials Science and Surf Engineering
Australia
Shiming Zhang
The University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Topics
biofilm
biological
biomaterial
biomimetic
elastic properties
microstructure
polymer
tissue
viscoelasticity