Call for Papers

Please contact the symposium organizers with questions.

Living cells ranging from bacteria to those derived from plants and animals have become universal engineering materials for constructing artificial or biomimetic multicellular systems for application in a variety of societal sectors, including biomedicine, energy, agriculture, and environment. Engineers now not only have this new class of materials to play with, but also the opportunity to explore a whole new set of engineering principles leveraging biology. Tremendous opportunities exist for both experimental and theoretical innovations. This symposium thus intends to capture this critical moment and help promote this emerging field, by offering an international forum for discussion on the design principles and theories, fabrication methods, and particular applications of engineered multicellular constructs that may take the form of a circuit, device or subsystem. Abstracts are also sought for (1) engineering functional cellular interfaces with the goal of facilitating a larger scale multicellular assembly and wiring, and (2) applying these engineered constructs in the context of a large system, e.g. implantation into an organism.

This symposium will be of interest to a diverse population of interdisciplinary scientists involved with the development, characterization and application of cell-based constructs for a variety of bioinspired or biorelevant applications. This symposium is open to those engineering efforts that intend to build entirely biological constructs bearing a rational design. Also of interest are the use of non-biological/non-living materials for assisting fabrication of the biological constructs, as well as approaches and studies on biointegration of these engineered constructs in an organism.

This symposium will provide an integrated forum to facilitate coherent interdisciplinary discussions among participants on the basis of applied living materials research toward addressing major challenges in this emerging field. It will also provide a medium to motivate discussions of the societal and economic connections that together will shape this fast-evolving field.

Topics will include:

• Design principles and theories
• Cell sources
• Cellular interface engineering
• 2D tissue microfabrication techniques
• 3D tissue microfabrication techniques: organotypic explant cultures and dissociated cultures organized onto 3D constructs
• Self-assembly and self-organization
• Genetic engineering to facilitate self-assembly and self-organization
• Developmental engineering
• Microfabrication techniques and microdevices to facilitate structure and functional bioconstruction
• Bioreactors and vascularization
• Biocircuits and biocomputers
• Biofuel cells
• Biodevices and biobots
• Living neural implants
• Retinal engineering
• Cortical neural tissue engineering
• Synthetic biology to engineer intercellular interfaces
• Multicellular synthetic circuits, including baterial and non-mammalian eukaryote circuits
• Emerging tools for multicellular circuits

Invited Speakers:

• Taher Saif (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)
• Ali Khademhosseini (University of California, Los Angeles, USA)
• Jacob Robinson (Rice University, USA)
• Herrera-Rincon Celia (Tufts University, USA)
• Seokheun Choi (State University of New York at Binghamton, USA)
• Tara Deans (University of Utah, USA)
• Cecelia Leal (University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, USA)
• Todd McDevitt (Gladstone Institutes, USA)
• Pinar Zorlutuna (University of Notre Dame, USA)

Symposium Organizers