FOCUSED SESSION 1: Bioinspiration, Green Manufacturing, and Emerging Frontiers in Advanced Materials

Over billions of years, nature has mastered the art of manufacturing complex, multifunctional materials under ambient conditions with zero waste. As we stand at the intersection of the climate crisis and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, translating these biological blueprints into scalable, sustainable manufacturing paradigms has never been more urgent—or more exciting. 

This focused session serves as a premier interdisciplinary forum bridging materials science, biology, mechanical engineering, and data science. We invite researchers, students, and industry pioneers to showcase cutting-edge advancements in bioinspired design, green processing, and next-generation manufacturing technologies. In response to the rapid evolution of this field, this session will place a special emphasis on AI-accelerated discovery, low-carbon footprint synthesis, and the translation of bioinspired concepts from lab to market. Whether you are developing fundamental insights into biological materials, pioneering novel low-temperature processing routes, or scaling sustainable manufacturing processes for real-world applications, this session offers a unique platform to exchange ideas, forge cross-disciplinary collaborations, and engage with a diverse global community spanning academia and industry. 

Proposed Session Topics 

• Structure, properties, and mechanisms of biological and bioinspired materials
• Aqueous synthesis, colloidal processing, and bottom-up assembly
• Cold sintering and low-temperature, energy-efficient processing technologies
• Physics-informed machine learning, generative AI, and multiscale modeling for materials design
• Bioinspired fabrication techniques, bioprocessing, and biohybrid materials
• Green manufacturing for energy conversion/storage, environmental remediation, and catalysis
• Emerging applications in soft robotics, wearable electronics, biomedical devices, and beyond
• Scalability, circular economy, and industrial pathways for sustainable advanced materials

Symposium Organizers 

• Zhaoyong Zou, Wuhan University of Technology, China 

• Manoj K Mahapatra, University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA 

• Tengteng Tang, University of Virginia, USA 

• Zhao Qin, Syracuse University, USA 

• Ling Li, University of Pennsylvania, USA 

• Wei Zhai, National University of Singapore, Singapore 

• Florian Bouville, Imperial College London, UK 

• Ziqi Sun, Queensland University of Technology, Australia 

• Hang Ping, Wuhan University of Technology, China 

Points of Contact 

• Zhaoyong Zou; zzou@whut.edu.cn 

• Manoj K Mahapatra; mkmanoj@uab.edu 

• Tengteng Tang; bav7wh@virginia.edu