Call for Papers

Please contact the symposium organizers with questions.

The ongoing development of biomaterials, nanomaterials and soft materials continue to offer innovative, biological and medical applications including highly engineerable multifunctional nanoprobes for biodiagnostics and theranostics, microfluidics systems for 2D and 3D in vitro studies, and regenerative tissue engineering. With these successes, bio-, nano-, and soft-materials are increasingly being considered as key building blocks of new generations of biomedical devices and analytical tools for biological studies. Despite incredibly fast technological advancement, technology translation from research laboratories to end users still remain slow and limited as biological and medical applications of these materials require tremendous versatility and multifunctionality – including biocompatibility, long-term robustness, repeatability, and scalability for mass production and high throughput. The motivation and challenge behind this symposium is to bring together key entities/stakeholders, ranging from regulatory and funding agencies to leading scientists and end-users, regarding potential technical breakthroughs and the improving the effectiveness of technology translation in the areas of biomaterials, nanomaterials, and soft materials with an emphasis on biological and medical applications. In addition to technical advances, the symposium aims to highlight the critical need for strategic plans/collaborations across these diverse entities to provide the essential technology-application-requirement linkages across the symposium participants.

Topics will include:

• Materials for 2D/3D cell culture
• Manufacturing of biologically relevant extracellular matrix (ECM) structures
• Characterization of physical properties of ECM
• Understanding of cell-ECM interplay
• Cell behavior in 3D cell culture and co-culture environments
• Cell migration, invasion, and fate assay
• Nanobiosensors
• Microfluidics systems for 2D and 3D in vitro studies / TissueChips
• Materials for imaging, sensing, and implants
• High throughput biotools for in vivo health monitoring and treatment
• Development of biocompatible materials with long-term robustness, repeatability, and scalability
• Theranostic nanobioprobes

Invited Speakers:

• Yong Zhu (North Carolina State University, USA)
• Edward Botchwey (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
• John Rogers (Northwestern University, USA)
• Dion Khodagholy (Columbia University, USA)
• Caroline Ajo-Franklin (Rice University, USA)
• Jose Centeno (U.S. Food and Drug Administration, USA)
• Xiaoyuan Chen (National Institutes of Health, USA)
• Horacio Espinosa (Northwestern University, USA)
• Sharon Gerecht (Johns Hopkins University, USA)
• Kurt Gothelf (Aarhus University, Denmark)
• Jay Groves (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
• Andrea Kasko (University of California, Los Angeles, USA)
• Justine Lee (University of California, Los Angeles, USA)
• Luke Lee (National University of Singapore, Singapore)
• Kristyn Masters (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)
• Marc Raphael (U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, USA)
• Khalid Salaita (Emory University, USA)

Symposium Organizers