New sustainable processes are needed to meet the increasing energy and materials demands of our society. Applications ranging from the chemical synthesis and power generation to agriculture, sensing, and waste treatment all contribute to this growing demand. Biological materials offer a promising basis for replacing current energy and material-intensive processes with more sustainable solutions. The advantages of these materials are amplified when coupled with abiotic components that can augment biological performance with increased control on functionality.

Recent efforts have focused on the use of biomaterials in biohybrid electrochemical systems. These systems incorporate biological components such as enzymes, extracted scaffolds, organelles, and even intact photosynthetic organisms like macroalgae and plants for applications in energy and sensing. However, these technologies suffer from bottlenecks such as limited electron transfer, diminished signal transduction, long term instability, and low yields. An interdisciplinary approach is therefore needed to overcome these bottlenecks, with joint efforts from material scientists, chemists, synthetic biologists, microbiologists, and engineers. We aim to create a symposium that brings together diverse scientists and engineers with the complementary expertise needed to realize the breadth of emerging technologies. The symposium will also include an open discussion session on the future research needs that the biomaterials society is called to address. Such a discussion will foster future collaborations and openness among researchers in all stages of their career.

biological biomaterial biomimetic cellular (material type) microscale nanoscale polymer protein