This symposium focuses on fundamental aspects and advanced applications of polymer gels, and provides an overview of this emerging field of materials science. Exciting developments of soft materials, including bio-inspired design principles and their applications will be discussed. Our ability to develop functional soft materials with tailored mechanical and biomedical properties is limited by the lack of understanding the relationship between the macroscopic properties and molecular architecture. Even with the most advanced experimental techniques, it is challenging to predict the macroscopic behavior, physical, chemical and biological properties of complex gel systems. State-of art multi-scale modeling in combination with high performance computation enables us to overcome this limitation. Over the past decade hydrogel-based printing/bioprinting became a vital method in emerging technologies ranging from engineering to life sciences. It will be demonstrated that 3D/4D printing can be used in the design and fabrication of advanced functional materials in a customizable way. The meeting will focus on new design approaches and development of new types of materials for rapid prototyping.

The symposium will cover areas from basics research to applications (e.g., tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, soft robotics). The invited presentations will be given by leading researchers from academia, government laboratories, and industry. An important goal of the conference is to promote collaboration across different disciplines such as materials science, physics, chemistry and engineering.

biomaterial biomimetic diffusion elastic properties macromolecular structure nanostructure neutron scattering polymer tissue viscoelasticity