Workshop on Self-Assembled Bio-Inspired Materials for Energy

Workshop on Self-Assembled Bio-Inspired Materials for Energy
February 4 & 5, 2011

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to invite you to participate at the “Workshop on Self-Assembled Bio-Inspired Materials for Energy” to be held at Argonne National Laboratory on February 4 and 5, 2011. The purpose of this workshop is to identify challenges and develop a strategy for advancing biomaterials for broad energy applications and to establish communication and collaborations between researchers at Argonne National Laboratory and neighboring Universities working on biomaterials.

The workshop will consist of two keynote lectures, to be given by Prof. George Whitesides (Harvard) and Prof. Raymond Goldstein (U. Cambridge, UK), followed by a number of invited talks. We will also include discussion sessions concerning the potential for wider collaboration on bio-inspired materials in the mid-west.

If you are able to participate at the workshop, please contact the workshop secretary, Nancy Sanchez (sanchez@anl.gov or 630-252-6525), as soon as possible. We will keep you posted as soon as further details of the workshop program are available. We look forward to your active participation in the discussion sessions and thank you in advance for your valuable time and contributions. If you have any questions, please contact us.

Sincerely,

Dr Jyotsana Lal <jlal@anl.gov>
Dr Igor Aronson <aronson@anl.gov>
Prof. Ursula Perez-Salas <perez-salas@anl.gov>
Materials Science Division

Workshop Synopsis

Self-assembly is a natural process by which biological systems create complex functional structures, like living tissues and membranes, from something that starts out disordered and inanimate. The approach, if properly utilized and put under control, can lead to unique functional bio-inspired materials with novel properties capable of, for example, harnessing photons from the sun in a solar panel, purifying water in synthetic membrane, delivering cargo in microfluidic device and repairing damage. Design of such smart, adaptive, self-healing materials is a very formidable challenge for fundamental science and engineering. The purpose of this workshop is to identify challenges and develop a strategy for advancing biomaterials for broad energy applications and to establish communication and collaborations between researchers at Argonne National Laboratory and neighboring Universities working on biomaterials.