Call for Papers

Please contact the symposium organizers with questions.

Living organisms produce a wide variety of hierarchical materials in an energy-efficient and highly reproducible manner, all under rather mild aqueous synthetic conditions. Throughout these processes, specialized biomacromolecules, such as proteins and peptides, enable 1) hierarchical organization to assemble biomaterials and execute high-level functions; and 2) precise control over mineral crystal nucleation, growth kinetics, phase transformation, and particle attachment and assembly, ultimately giving rise to biominerals with versatile functions. Inspired by nature, numerous approaches have been developed for the design and synthesis of bioinspired materials by using engineered proteins, peptides, DNA, PNA and other sequence-defined synthetic polymers (e.g., peptoids). These efforts address one of the grand challenges of materials science: to design and synthesize functional materials that rival those found in biology.

This symposium will highlight recent developments in the areas of 1) bioinspired macromolecular assembly to exploit (bio)macromolecules as building blocks to create hierarchical bionanomaterials, and 2) biomimetic control over crystallization including a) bioinspired control over inorganic (nano)crystal nucleation and growth, and b) nanoparticle self-assembly and attachment. This symposium will also address 3) the most recent insights obtained in the principles underlying (bio)macromolecular assembly and bio-controlled crystal formation (including using in situ molecular imaging and computational tools).

Topics will include:

• Hierarchical assembly of proteins, peptides, peptoids, or other biomimetic polymers into nanostructured materials and their applications.
• Biomineralization.
• Bioinspired crystal growth.
• Chiral nanomaterials.
• Bioinspired nanoparticle assembly
• Advanced characterization tools, including in situ TEM and AFM, for bioinspired macromolecular assembly and bio-controlled inorganic crystal formation.
• Theory driven design of (bio)macromolecules for assembly and for controlling inorganic crystal formation.
• Applications of bioinspired macromolecule assemblies and organic-inorganic hybrid hierarchical materials.

Invited Speakers (tentative):

• David Baker (University of Washington, USA)
• Michael Davis (Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Emory University and Georgia Tech, USA)
• James De Yoreo (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA)
• Patricia Dove (Virginia Tech, USA)
• Ehud Gazit (Tel Aviv University, Israel)
• Yu Huang (University of California, Los Angeles, USA)
• David Kisailus (University of California, Irvine, USA)
• Marc Knecht (University of Miami, USA)
• Nicholas Kotov (University of Michigan, USA)
• Dongsheng Li (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA)
• Chuanbin Mao (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)
• Fiona Meldrum (University of Leeds, United Kingdom)
• Andrea Merg (University of California, Merced, USA)
• Jwa-Min Nam (Seoul National University, Republic of Korea)
• Ki Tae Nam (Seoul National University, Republic of Korea)
• So-Jung Park (Ewha Womans University, Republic of Korea)
• Darrin Pochan (University of Delaware, USA)
• Marika Rioult (3-D Matrix Medical Technology, Japan)
• Nico Sommerdijk (Radboud University Medical Center, Netherlands)
• Nicholas Stephanopoulos (Arizona State University, USA)
• Molly Stevens (Imperial College London, United Kingdom)
• Samuel Stupp (Northwestern University, USA)
• Jing Sun (Jilin University, China)
• Rein Ulijn (The City University of New York, USA)
• Larry Unsworth (University of Alberta, Canada)
• Shuguang Zhang (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
• Ronald Zuckermann (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA)

Symposium Organizers