Programme features

Each day will include a plenary session with invited lecturers and a workshop with selected talks. Poster sessions will be held on three evenings. To promote training and career development of Early Career researcher, the program will also include three flash presentation sessions. Here, for each session, PhD students or postdoctoral fellows are selected to give brief talks on their posters.

Keynote Lectures (45 min + 15 min discussion) by 2 renowned speakers (Chwee Teck Lim & Denis WIrtz) will put the biointerfaces field in the larger scientific and social context, covering historical and ethical aspects of the field, general principles that govern (force-induced) biointeractions in nature, and scientific and economical perspectives of the field for the future.

'Women in Science’ Plenary Talk by Prof. Viola Vogel (45 min + 15 min discussion). Viola is a biophysicist and bioengineer. She is a professor at ETH Zürich, where she is Head of the Department of Health Sciences and Technology. Viola is a world expert in applied mechanobiology, and she is one of the very few female scientists recently elected as foreign member of the US National Academy of Engineering for elucidating how proteins work as nanoscale mechanochemical switches.

Invited talks: (40 min +10 min discussion). A total of 19 invited talks will be given by young and established scientists who made significant conceptual advances in the field of biointerfaces. All sessions will furthermore have Contributed Talks selected from the pool of abstracts submitted by early stage researcher participants (14 contributed talks in total, 20 min +5 min each). These talks will be selected among the early stage researcher participants, based on the abstract. Scientific quality, interdisciplinarity, and scope will be given priority; while gender and geographical balance, will be considered in the selection process. 

Flash Presentations: We will have 3 sessions of flash presentations in which we will allow those who are presenting a poster in the evening an opportunity to preview their poster to the entire conference. These talks will be 3-5 minutes in length.

“Forward Look” plenary discussion: The keynote speakers, together with the other speakers and the organizers, will be asked to actively participate in a “Forward Look” plenary discussion (60 min), dedicated to grand challenges in science, society and economy to which the biointerface community could contribute This discussion will be co-chaired by the conference vice-chairs Kaori Sugihara and Andrea Salis (who will become the Chairs in the 2023 edition of the conference). 

Poster sessions: Strong emphasis will be put on creating an atmosphere conducive to informal interactions. Poster Sessions will be held every day, in the evening, after the keynote lectures. Posters will be on display throughout the entire Course, in the main conference room, such that they are easily accessible during breaks. We will seek to attract sponsoring for poster prizes and beverages throughout the poster sessions (the Journal Biointerphases has already agreed to sponsor a US$500 Poster Award). Traditionally, poster sessions have been very lively with nearly all attendees staying late into the night for extended discussions and interactions. 

Long mid-day breaks will make sure there is ample time for informal interactions between and among participants and speakers. Breakfast, lunch and dinner will be shared by all participants. Invited speakers will be informed that they are expected to attend the Advanced Course throughout its total duration.