Program

Schedule

The scientific program will start on Wednesday 26th May 2027 at 09.00 and is expected to finish at 17.00 on Friday 28th May 2027. Registration on 26th May is planned to start at 08.00. The program is organised in 6 different themes. 

Themes

  1. Synthesis, characterisation and application of programmable Architecture: This covers metamaterials, topology and shape-morphing structures that includes quantum materials, materials designed for electrical transport and for energy storage, geometry-encoded and topology-encoded responses; designed structural transformations.
  2. Complex fluids. This includes structure and flow properties of complex and responsive liquids, including ionic liquids and suspensions, and the relation between structure and flow properties as well as microfluidics.
  3. Hierarchical Self-Assembly: From molecular interactions to mesoscale architecture in polymers, lyotropic liquid crystals, proteins and colloidal systems, which covers equilibrium and near-equilibrium organisation; as well as structure formation across length scales
  4. Directed self-assembly This covers materials with well-defined structures formed by directed assembly and non-equilibrium states and includes soft matter as a substrate for adaptive responses, liquid-liquid phase separation and coacervation
  5. Soft Matter in biology: This includes materials for drug delivery, biointegration, bioelectronics and therapeutic function, which (overs material–tissue interfacing; translational function across the synthetic–biological boundary, mechanical forces as regulatory signals in biological systems; physics–biology interface at the cellular and tissue scale.
  6. Functional Foods and Food Systems This section revolves around food as edible soft matter, which covers product formation and sustainable processing of food and food ingredients with the aim to increase food quality and contribute to health and well-being by utilizing structured edible matter.

Plenary Speakers

Prof. Bradley Chmelka, UC Santa Barbara, USA: Preliminary title: Functionally active membrane proteins in robust biohybrid materials

Prof. Amy Q. Shen, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), Japan: Preliminary Title: Flow, Structure, and Function in Complex Fluids

Prof. Raffaele Mezzenga, ETH Zürich, Switzerland: Preliminary Title: Sustainable technologies from self-assembly of protein nanofibrils

Prof. Kathleen Stebe, University of Pennsylvania, USA: Preliminary Title: Peptide and Peptide Inspired Surfactants for Rare Earth Element Recovery in Foams.

Prof. Jennifer Lewis, Harvard University, USA: Preliminary Title: Building vascularized human tissues for drug discovery, disease modeling, and therapeutic use.

Prof. Karin Schroen, Wageningen University & Research, The Netherlands: Designing food from first principles, using small scale investigations as a basis for smart process design, and creating health benefits as a bonus.

Other Talks and Posters

The programme will also include talks about applications with further speakers to be announced.  There will be contributed talks selected from the submitted abstracts as well as poster presentations.