Call for Papers

Please contact the symposium organizers with questions.

Nature has evolved a variety of creative approaches to many aspects of materials design. Biomolecular interactions found in peptides and proteins enable the construction of large, complex structures with multiple functions across multiple length scales. This has inspired sophisticated functional materials observed in all living organisms, where most materials exhibit a hierarchy of structure that is critical to their functions. Researchers have recognized the potential of biological tools in the creation of synthetic materials with new materials created using peptide and protein interactions. Specifically, this symposium will focus on the significant progress that has been made towards understanding the design rules, mechanisms and driving forces behind the design and hierarchical assembly of peptides and proteins and derivatives thereof. Materials made from peptides and proteins can be engineered through precise molecular modifications using natural and non-natural amino acids. Furthermore, secondary structure (i.e., molecular conformation), tertiary structure (i.e., intramolecular structure), and quaternary structure (i.e., intermolecular structure) can all be designed to control materials across multiple length scales in order to control responses to external fields (e.g., electric, magnetic, and shear), temperature, salts, pH, and light. This control can lead to multifunctional and stimuli-responsive systems with spatial-, temporal-, and dosage-controlled functionalities for a diverse range of applications in biomedical materials (e.g., tissue engineering, drug delivery, biosensing) as well as bioelectronics, composite templating, energy harvesting, and high performance structural materials. With advances in synthetic peptide and polypeptide synthesis as well as synthetic biology, materials need not be limited to small-scale, high-tech, or bio-tech applications. Peptides and proteins will be discussed as building blocks for potential technology spanning high-tech to commodity materials.

This interdisciplinary symposium will bring together those working in the field of materials design, spanning computation/simulation and experiment, exploiting bio-inspired self-assembly of biologically relevant molecules including peptides and polypeptides, proteins, and peptoids well as hybrid and composite systems.

Topics will include:

• Principles and materials design rules (incl. computation and simulation)
• Theory-driven molecular and self-assembled material design
• Building complex nanostructure through bio-inspired self-assembly (incl. peptide and protein origami)
• Novel hybrids molecules for functional materials designs (incl. peptoids, biomolecule conjugates with other molecules such as synthetic polymers or DNA )
• Use of non-natural amino acids in synthetic peptides and recombinantly expressed proteins for material design, formation, and function
• Designing of 3D functional structures (incl. hydrogel and organogel networks, colloidal particle assemblies, membranes, auxetic materials)
• Designing 1D nanostructured functional materials (incl. nanowires, nanotubes, nanofibers)
• Design of stimuli-responsive materials exploiting peptide and proteins
• Controlling biological interactions by design (incl. cell behavior, protein adhesion, immune responses)
• Design of peptide and protein materials for biological application (incl. tissue engineering, cellular therapies, controlled and targeted drug delivery)
• Design of peptide and protein materials for energy applications (incl. biosensing, energy harvesting and electronic applications)
• Design of peptide and protein materials with exotic mechanical behaviors (incl. extreme extensibility and stiffness)
• 3D and 4D advanced manufacturing and printing technologies of peptide and protein materials

Invited Speakers:

• David Baker (University of Washington, USA)
• Julie Champion (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
• Chun-long Chen (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA)
• Timothy Deming (University of California, Los Angeles, USA)
• Trevor Douglas (Indiana University Bloomington, USA)
• Sarah Heilshorn (Stanford University, USA)
• Ming Jiang (Fudan University, China)
• Sinan Keten (Northwestern University, USA)
• Kristi Kiick (University of Delaware, USA)
• Yong-beom Lim (Yonsei University, Republic of Korea)
• Julie Liu (Purdue University, USA)
• Alvaro Mata (The University of Nottingham, United Kingdom)
• Alberto Saiani (The University of Manchester, United Kingdom)
• Akif Tezcan (University of California, San Diego, USA)
• Ting Xu (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
• Zhimou Yang (Nankai University, China)

Symposium Organizers