Development of materials, devices and systems that can intelligently and dynamically interface with biology are becoming increasingly important in designing biosensors and neuromorphic electronics. This symposium aims to find the common intersection of several topics some of which are already covered in separate sections at MRS. It is becoming well-known that traditional computing systems are unable to capture the efficiency of the brain in information processing. The computational primitives of biological neural networks on device and circuit level are the first step towards efficient neuromorphic computing systems that are able to analyze, interpret, perceive and act upon a dynamic, real-world environment. Thus, a new era of smart sensor and actuation applications is emerging with systems that perceive and interact with the world and efficiently couple with biological environments. Nevertheless, such intelligent agents also require novel algorithmic support in a co-design fabric. Allowing actual biological substrates to compute is an even longer-term approach to directly harness the biological level of computational efficiency.

In this symposium, the latest advancements of inorganic and organic materials for bio-inspired information processing bio-computation and biosensing will be covered. Emerging applications will be showcased in neuromorphic computing, sensing, actuation and nano-scale bio-interfacing along with recent advancements in algorithmic development. This symposium aspires to bring together world-wide experts in the fields of neuromorphic computing, bioelectronics and neuroscience in order to enhance transdisciplinary interactions and thus bridge the gaps between materials science, computing and neuroscience by initiating a dialogue around the proposed emerging topic.