Please contact the symposium organizers with questions.

This symposium will cover emerging materials and devices for bio-interface targeting applications on energy, sustainable agriculture, environmental monitoring and bio-hybrid systems. The symposium will focus on interface with plants and microorganisms and each session will highlight a specific target application. Advances in bioelectronics and nanobiotechnology give numerous opportunities for coupling with natural organisms and augmenting functionality to them. Therefore materials design and engineering is crucial for translating the signal at the biotic/abiotic interface for input and readout. A key focus will be sensors and actuators for monitoring and controlling plant physiology for fundamental understanding of biological processes, plant optimization/adaptation and increase of productivity. Efforts on developing smart materials for sustainable and precision agriculture including controlled release fertilizers and pest/disease prevention and treatment will also be emphasized. The symposium will include discussions on direct functionalization of plants for bio-hybrid systems, energy applications and environmental monitoring as well as using the in-vivo environment as a bioreactor and chemical catalyst. Technologies that involve coupling of active materials with microorganisms for fuels cell, bio-photovoltaics and bio-sensing including enzyme and protein engineering will also be covered. The symposium will be complemented with contributions from plant biologists related to plant (electro-)physiology and ecology. Within the symposium we aim to cover a diverse range of topics and bring together experts who may not normally attend the same symposium. Finally the symposium will give a visionary outlook of integration of the technology in urban settings, agriculture and terrestrial and space environment.

Topics will include:

• Bioelectronics and nanotechnology for sensing and controlling plant and microbial physiology
• Environmental sensors based on plants and microorganisms
• Energy conversion using plants and microorganisms
• Materials and devices for bio-interface; environment, energy and space
• Organic and inorganic biohybrids from biomolecules to organisms
• Electronic and ionic coupling in plants and microorganisms

Invited Speakers:

• Magnus Berggren (Linköping University, Sweden)
• Gianluca Farinola (University of Bari, Italy)
• Ardemis Boghossian (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland)
• Drew Evans (University of South Australia, Australia)
• Rainer Hedrich (University of Wurzburg, Germany)
• Anne Jones (Arizona State University, USA)
• Neel Joshi (Harvard University, USA)
• Markita Landry (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
• Thomas Lawton (Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, USA)
• Yuanyuan Li (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden)
• Benedetto Marelli (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
• Nicolas Plumere (Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany)
• Ramaraja Ramasamy (University of Georgia, USA)
• Marin Sawa (Imperial College London, United Kingdom)
• Daniel Simon (Linkoping University, Sweden)
• Jenny Zhang (University of Cambridge, United Kingdom)

Symposium Organizers