2008-08-22

International Materials Forum 2008 held in Bayreuth, Germany

The International Materials Forum conference was held in Bayreuth on August 4–5. Organised jointly by Dietrich Haarer and Hans-Werner Schmidt of Bayreuth University and the Centre of Excellence New Materials (www.new-materials.de), the conference series focuses on top quality, presenting its approximately ninety participants with a high-class programme. The conference traditionally brings together different research communities and branches of industry and provides excellent contact opportunities for transfer of ideas and concepts.

The 2008 edition focused on materials for information storage, electronics and medical applications.
Nobel Laureate Peter Grünberg lectured on his award-winning topic of magnetism in micro and nano dimensions. Further keynotes were given by Masanobu Yamamoto (Sony Corporation, Kanagawa), Sir Richard Friend (Cambridge), C. James Kirkpatrick (Mainz), and a special lecture by Michael Jaffe (NJ Center for Biomaterials). Yamamoto, one of the principal inventors of the blue-ray disc, gave an overview of optical storage evolution and information chemistry. Friend gave insight into interface phenomena in organic semiconductors, while Kirkpatrick presented the challenges that materials face in medicine and life sciences. Jaffe's talk concluded the conference with the influences that processing and structure have on the performance on polymeric biomaterials.

Further speakers were Albrecht Winnacker from Erlangen, Jörg Bagdahn of Fraunhofer SiPV Centre in Halle, Craig Grimes from PSU, Daniel Cohn from Jerusalem, Peter Fratzl from MPI Golm and Thomas Scheibel from Bayreuth as well as industry speakers from Bayer MaterialsScience (Hans-Wilhelm Engels), Ciba Inc. (Alessandro Zedda), polyMaterials AG (Jürgen Stebani), and Siemens AG Healthcare (Bernhard Roas).

Photograph, from left to right: Dietrich Haarer (Bayreuth), Masanobu Yamamoto (Sony Japan), Nobel Laureate Peter Grünberg (Jülich) and Hans-Werner Schmidt (Bayreuth).