The primary goal of this Multidisciplinary Research Workshop is to advance the emerging field of self-assembling peptide systems. Recently, this field has been actively pursued in several broad research areas. This workshop will bring together researchers from various backgrounds who would have never met otherwise. This is the first meeting to cover such a broad spectrum of fields, including biology, chemistry, physics, protein science, polymer science, materials science, various engineering disciplines, and medical science, unified under a common theme. Biology is reaching the limit of what it can accomplish without the influence of other fields, especially computer science, engineering, and materials science. These disciplines will again bring new technologies, techniques, and innovations to biology, allowing Biologists to approach previously unanswerable questions. It is important now, more than ever, that Biologists collaborate with scientists from all fields to allow Biology to reach new heights in the next century. It is tremendously exciting to bring biologists, chemists, physicists, and various engineers under one roof. A cross-disciplinary meeting will undoubtedly generate a many novel ideas and diverse collaborations. It is believed that these unconventional collaborations will produce breakthroughs in many unsolved problems in biology. This workshop will also be an incubator for the development of new technologies. This may evolve into a regular multidiscplinary event held every two years, alternating meeting sites between the US and Europe.
