The GDR 2088 “Biomim”: Biomimicry and Bioinspiration hold its 1st Annual Meeting in a hybrid format last 13-14 October 2020, where on-site participants met at Le Negresco Hotel in Nice, France and on-line participants joined via the Zoom platform. The full conference website can be accessed here.
Bioinspiration & Biomimicry Sessions
The two-day event aimed to discuss the latest developments and researches of GDR 2088 members who are working on topics that seek to resolve scientific, societal, and regional challenges that are related to Biomimicry and Bioinspiration. The meeting featured 8 parallel sessions, namely:
General topics on bioinspiration and biomimicry
There were two parallel sessions covering general topics on bioinspiration and biomimicry. The sessions were chaired by Karsten Haupt, Karim El-Kirat, Frédéric Guittard. There were 13 talks for these sessions including 11 oral contributions and 2 invited speakers who were Soizic Prado of the French National Museum of Natural History and Marc Robert of University of Paris.
Movement, mobility, bioinspiration, bio-robotic
The session chaired by Damien Chablat and Pierre Moretto covered topics in locomotion: crawl in worm, swimming in snale (ANR Snake) and ant hexapod gait (MITI Barbarus) and motion in collaborative robots: collective load carrying in human (ANR CoBot), collective motion in school fishes. There were 3 oral contributions and 2 invited speakers, namely, Santiago Arroyave-Tobon of Aix Marseille University and Anthony Herrel of the French National Museum of Natural History.
Biomaterials and bioinspired medical devices
The session is under the general session Bioinspired Medicine and was proposed by the Biomaterials commission. It was chaired by Yvan Rahbé and included the topics on biomimicry, biomaterials, medical devices, antimicrobial substances and materials, tissue and cell engineering, and regenerative medicine. There were 4 oral contributions and an invited talk by Virginie Dulong of Rouen Normandie University
Drugs and bioinspired materials of therapeutic value
This is another session under the general session Bioinspired Medicine and was proposed by the Grand Est region. The session was chaired by Christophe Drouet and the included 5 oral contributions on organoids, personalized medicine, drug screening and design, therapeutic vectors, pharmacokinetics, biodistribution, molecular and cellular machines.
Feeling, experiencing, perceiving
The session on molecular recognition, sensors, antibacterial, and self-assembly was chaired by Soizic Prado, Bernd Schöllhorn, and Anne Gaucher. It included 4 oral contributions and 2 invited speakers, namely, Florent Le Guern and Clemence Sicard, both from Institut Lavoisier de Versailles.
Structures in biomimetic systems and perspective applications
The structural thematics presented 2 sub-sessions, (1) senior researchers presented the research activity of their teams in the scope of the research axis Structure and the potential collaborations, they desired in the framework of the GDR, (2) for junior researchers (PhD students and post-docs). The topics included structures observed in lipid-based biomimetic systems, structures in biopolymer-based biomimetic systems, interfacial and surface structures in biomimetic systems, structure and shape: theoretical aspects, and technological perspectives in nanotechnology, medicine, drug delivery, diagnostics, food, engineering, and other domains. The sessions were chaired by Thierry Darmanin and Angelina Angelova. There were 8 oral contributions and an invited talk given by Thomas Bizien of Synchrotron Soleil.
Biosensors and chemical sensors
The main session was divided into 2 parallel sessions and presented the advances in the development of biosensors, and chemical sensors. It was chaired by Carole Chaix, Claude Forano, Sébastien Balme, and Alberto Marra. There were 8 oral contributions and 1 invited talk by Yanxia Hou-Broutin of the University of Grenoble Alpes.
Poster session
The poster session was held at the Salon Versailles of Le Negresco Hotel as well as online via the conference website. There were a total of 12 posters encompassing all the thematic axes of GDR 2088. It was also the time for the members to discuss with other conference attendees. A Gala dinner followed afterwards with around 85 attendees.
GDR 2088 Plenary Meeting
The plenary meeting was held during the first day of the conference and was hosted by Frédéric Guittard and Hernando S. Salapare III, who also gave the welcome remarks and update report on membership, respectively. Guittard presented the goals and missions of the GDR as well as other general information about the organization, while, Salapare reported that there were 699 researchers implicated in the GDR that belongs to 92 teams and laboratories from 10 regions of France. The members of the scientific council then presented the 7 thematic axis of the GDR. Each member laboratory/institution then presented their teams and the competencies, and the needed competencies that may be augmented by any of the member teams of GDR 2088. The next annual meeting will be held in October 2021 and the members were invited to host the next event.
Hybrid Conference
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 1st Annual Meeting Organizers met regularly and decided to conduct the event as a hybrid conference with on-site participants in Le Negresco Hotel in Nice, France and online participants joining via the Zoom platform. There were around a total of 85 on-site participants and 50 online participants in the hybrid event.
The organizers also implemented the strict COVID restrictions imposed by the venue and the City of Nice. There were no COVID cases that were reported after the event as speakers and participants were requested to participate online if they were in contact with people who were COVID positive or if they were presenting any symptoms.
The event was held jointly with the 5th International Conference on Bioinspired and Biobased Chemistry and Materials (NICE 2020 Conference) and the 2nd International Conference on Optics, Photonics, and Materials.