Biological material or Sustainable Metamaterial?

This event will bring together researchers in biological and biogenic materials with those in biomaterials and sustainable metamaterials. How are these diverse fields working in parallel on the same problems and how can we translate different perspectives between them?

Biological materials are Sustainable metamaterials. Or are they? Though both fields complement each other in insight and expertise, their perspectives and challenges can be radically different. This meeting will bring together diverse researchers working on biological materials with people developing sustainable metamaterials to understand where we share challenges and solutions, and where perspectives diverge.

Discussion topics will be the use of (de)cellularisation, energetic and temporal non-equilibria, mimicry and reproduction, harvesting and processing. Attendees will submit a short expert perspective on the future of the biological / sustainable material landscape through the lens of their own research area, which we will bring together for a review.

Key Speakers

• Dr Anton Souslov (University of Cambridge)
• Dr Humberto Herrera-Ubaldo (University of Cambridge)
• Dr Bethan Charles (University of Bristol)
• Dr Nicola Nadeau (University of Sheffield)
• Dr Sepideh Khodaparast (University of Leeds)
• Professor Christopher Holland (University of Sheffield)
• Professor Martyn Dade-Robertson (University of Northumbria)
• Dr Katie Shanks (University of Exeter)
• Dr Ulrike Bauer (University of Exeter)

Metamaterials research aims to design new architectures for materials so that these new structures produce new or enhanced function. In sustainable metamaterials, that means using non-extractive renewable resources that don’t pollute. Through developing sustainable metamaterials, engineers are working from the bottom up to fundamentally rethink materials.

But wait! ‘Metamaterials’ in which combinations of intricately structured stuff produce function? ‘Sustainable’ materials that self-assemble, power and replicate themselves? Don’t biological materials fit the bill exactly? The world of natural materials is vast and untapped – in fact, researchers in biological materials are often found asking how and why these intricate, biodegradable, sustainably resourced complex composites do what they do. What part does each feature of their ‘design’ – or rather, adaptation – play?

In this meeting, we will be discussing how these two perspectives on materials design are attempting to ask similar questions, and stretching towards similar goals. However, we also want to pull out the differences in opinion, the blindspots and the incompatibilities in the research fields.

We invite a < 250 word contribution from every attendee ahead of the meeting about how your own material, challenge or study-system inspires your thinking about the crossover between ‘sustainable metamaterials’ and ‘biological materials’ – and their future, together or apart. From the contributions we will be putting together a perspective article.