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Great Success for BIONIC Conference in Leoben Print
The one-day conference “Prospects of BIONIC for Functional Materials Science and Engineering”, which took place on September 22 at the University of Leoben, received extremely positive feedback and was a great success. Under the scientific management of Prof. Dr. Oskar Paris (Institute of Physics) and organised by the Industrial Liaison Department, the organisers succeeded in giving a profound overview about the national and international activities in this field of research in a surprisingly compact and concise programme. Moreover, by hosting 110 participants, the expectations of the organizers were exceeded by far.


As an English-speaking event, the conference attracted participants from Germany, England, Austria and Italy. The conference was primarily intended as a platform for scientific exchange, but also generated great interest from renowned Austrian enterprises from sectors such as paper and cardboard production, household appliances, polymer engineering and electronics. It is also noteworthy that particular high interest was paid by the future generation of scientists: Approx. 50 percent of the participants were students, most of them in the final stage of writing their master’s or doctoral thesis, and thus made up the biggest group in the audience.

Five keynote lectures were held by distinguished experts in the area of "bio-inspired" materials research, ranging from basic research to conversion technologies. The keynote speeches were complemented by numerous excellent short presentations. Due to the great interest, a poster show was organised in addition to the presentations.

Besides exchanging and transferring state-of-the-art knowledge, the conference was able to show that the Austrian materials research in this field, and in particular the University of Leoben, have high potential and expertise in bio-mimetic and bio-inspired materials. Due to the great success of the event, it is expected that further projects and developments in this area will be initiated.

The organisers give their thanks to the sponsors of this event: BMVIT, Nanonet Styria and the Materials Cluster Styria.

Further information:
Dr. Brigitte Kriszt
Montanuniversität Leoben, Außeninstitut
Tel.: +43/(0)3842/46010-15
E-Mail: brigitte.kriszt[at]unileoben.ac.at