Call for Papers

Please contact the symposium organizers with questions.

Over the past century, humankind has enjoyed the consumer convenience and technological advancements enabled by petroleum-based plastics, while at the same time perpetuating the negative consequences of non-degradable plastic wastes after their service life. To increase the sustainability of human society, new strategies for materials synthesis and a focus on renewable resources is needed. To that end, Nature provides abundant raw materials that can be transformed into biodegradable high-performance and multifunctional materials, including cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, chitin, alginate, and silk, among many others. If these biopolymers can be rationally processed, modified, and designed, they can be used as advanced materials with potential applications as structural and engineering products and with utility in environmental remediation, optical devices, electronic substrates, energy harvesting systems and storage materials, as well as biomedical devices. Furthermore, Nature also offers numerous examples of structural designs that endow materials with exceptional performance, thus providing inspiration for the design of functional materials in concert with sustainable technology. This symposium will provide updates on the state-of-the-art research on the design and analysis of multifunctional materials, structures, and devices that are derived from and inspired by Nature, bringing together scientists and engineers across various disciplines.

Topics will include:

• Structure-property relationships in bioderived materials, such as cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, silk and chitin
• Advanced functionalization, processing, and characterization of bioderived materials
• Design of high performance (strong, tough, and light-weight) and multifunctional materials from bioderived materials or using bioinspired strategies
• Design of bio-derived or bio-inspired materials for optical and electronic applications
• Design of energy harvesting and storage materials and devices from bioderived materials or bioinspired structures

Invited Speakers:

• Lars Berglund (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden)
• Mark C. Thies (Clemson University, USA)
• Peter Ciesielski (National Renewable Energy Laboratory, USA)
• Maneesh Gupta (Air Force Research Laboratory, USA)
• Liangbing Hu (University of Maryland, USA)
• Olli Ikkala (Aalto University, Finland)
• David Kaplan (Tufts University, USA)
• Haeshin Lee (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea)
• Mark MacLachlan (University of British Columbia, Canada)
• Phillip Messersmith (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
• Jin Kim Montclare (New York University, USA)
• Masaya Nogi (Osaka University, USA)
• Rojas Orlando (University of British Columbia, Canada)
• Lars Wagberg (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden)
• Guang Yang (Huazhong University of Science & Technology, China)
• Shu-Hong Yu (University of Science and Technology of China, China)

Symposium Organizers