WORKSHOP: Lorentz center workshop: Anisotropy and Shape in Biological Materials: From Structure to Functionality

University Of California - Merced, Merced CA

Investigators

Abstract

Nontechnical: This award by the Biomaterials program in the Division of Materials Research to University of California, Merced is for the participant travel support to attend and present recent scientific developments at the 2016 Lorentz Center Meeting to be held at the Lorentz Center, in Leiden, the Netherlands from May 23rd-27th 2016. This award is cofounded by the Global Venture Funds in the Office of International Science and Engineering. This workshop is committed to in bringing young and senior scientists together, and to discuss their current research and builds informal networks with their peers fostering collaborations and interactions between scientists from different countries and fields that may lead to a lifetime of collaboration and scientific achievement. To fulfill this scientific goal and the broader impacts, the organizers have invited a significant number of early career faculty and postdocs as well as senior scientists to speak at the meeting. The proposed travel stipends will be used to bring early career scientists from the US, and to encourage the participation of female physics and engineering faculty at the meeting. Exposing a diverse mix of scientists to this kind of intensive interactive meeting will be an excellent way to stimulate broader participation in cutting edge international projects. Technical: This workshop is on deformable biological and bio-inspired materials, and will focus on the role of anisotropy on the structural and functional attributes of biomaterials, especially from a morphological point of view. Although material anisotropy has been demonstrated to have significant implications, on the strength and functioning of tissue engineered constructs, its role as a control parameter for designing biomaterials in general is yet to be assessed. This necessitates the need for a fundamental insight into the science of deformable materials bounded, on the one hand by structural ordering, and on the other hand by biological activity. The goal of this workshop is to bring together top class pure and applied scientists (about 25 to 55 participants) with the aim of interfacing multiple disciplines (physics, chemistry, biology and engineering) to understand the fundamentals of anisotropic deformable materials, and in tandem, develop applications based on these novel concepts. These interactions will be critical to generate an understanding of how particular materials should be designed to be "symbiotic" with biological entities and how to get similarity in functioning of biomaterials with their living counterparts.