Reverse Engineering of Bio-Inspired Nanomaterials

Materials Research Society, Warrendale PA

Investigators

Abstract

Nontechnical: This award by the Biomaterials Program in the Division of Materials Research to Materials Research Society is to partially support the 2014 Fall Meeting of Materials Research Society (MRS) Symposium on "Reverse Engineering of Bio-Inspired Nanomaterials" in Boston, MA on November 30-December 5, 2014. The objectives of this Symposium are: 1) bringing together a diverse group of speakers comprised of leaders and young researchers; 2) promoting cross disciplinary fertilization of new ideas in Bioinspired Nanomaterials; and 3)creating a sense of community by promoting interaction among young scientists, underrepresented minority scientists, and junior faculty members with prominent senior investigators in the field. The program serves both to educate the biomaterials and engineering community in the highly relevant field of bioinspired nanomaterial, and to stimulate discussions on current approaches from materials research, engineering and biological perspectives. This Symposium is specifically designed to provide a venue for drawing in young scientists and researchers, and getting involved at the Frontier of Science. Graduate students, post-docs, and other scientists with comparable levels of experience and education will come together in a highly-stimulating environment to discuss their current research and build informal networks with their peers, and these interactions may lead to a lifetime of collaborations and scientific advancement. Technical: The focus of this MRS Symposium is on "Reverse Engineering of Bio-Inspired Nanomaterials" and in pursuing a fundamental understanding of the materials design principles in nature using basic biological building blocks such as DNA/RNA, peptide/proteins, lipids, polysaccharides, etc., and re-engineering hierarchically organized functional structures for various applications. Progress in bio-inspired or biomimetic materials design provides new solutions to tackle challenging scientific problems in energy, medicine, nanomanufacturing, and other related areas. This Symposium will be on physical scientific and engineering aspects of bioinspired nanomaterials. The attendees of this multidisciplinary Symposium will be biologists, bioengineers, chemists, physicists, materials scientists, etc., and they will be addressing the challenges in translating ground breaking fundamental scientific advances in biology and physical sciences into products in biomaterials and naomaterials among others.