THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NATURE INSPIRED SURFACE ENGINEERING (NISE 2026)
The Fourth International Conference on Nature-Inspired Surface Engineering (NISE 2026), following the third one (click here to see the details of the past conference, NISE 2024), will be held on Aug 10-13, 2026 at the University of Toronto, Canada. NISE 2026 will be hosted by the Department of Materials Science & Engineering.
Nature, such as plants, insects, and marine animals, shows unique surface properties in their components (e.g., leaves, wings, eyes, legs, and skins) for multiple purposes, such as water-repellency, anti-adhesion, and anti-reflection. Such multifunctional surface properties are attributed to three-dimensional and hierarchical surface structures with modulated surface chemistry and mechanical pliability. Over the last couple of decades, we have witnessed a significant advancement in the fundamental understanding of surface and interfacial phenomena of such multifunctional surfaces as well as the design, fabrication, and applications of those coatings/surfaces/materials. The NISE conference provides a means of reporting and sharing the latest developments in the nature-inspired surface engineering, encompassing physics, chemistry, biology, material science, and various engineering disciplines. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Fundamental understanding of surface and interface science and phenomena such as wetting, adhesion, adsorption, desorption, friction, (bio)tribology, wear, corrosion, biofouling, icing/deicing, phase changes, heat/energy transfer, electrochemistry, optics/photonics, etc.
- Material processing and fabrication techniques for functional surfaces including novel techniques such as 3D printing and self-assembly
- Surface modification and coating techniques for functional surfaces
- Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for surface engineering
- Hydro-, aero, ice-, and oleo-phobic/philic surfaces
- SLIPS (slippery liquid infused porous surfaces) and LIS (lubricant impregnated surfaces)
- Stimuli-responsive and adaptive materials and surfaces
- Self-healing/self-repairing materials and surfaces
- Surface engineering in energy applications
- Surface engineering in water-related applications
- Surface engineering in biomedical applications
- Surface engineering in optical and electrical applications
- Surface engineering in industrial applications
- Surface characterization and metrology
- Novel phenomena and applications of engineered surfaces/coatings
IMPORTANT DATES
Abstract Submission Deadline: January 31, 2026
Early Bird Registration Deadline: April 30, 2026
Regular Registration Deadline: May 31, 2026
ABSTRACT SUBMISSION
Please download and use the abstract template (click here) in Word file. Please follow the format and instruction presented in the template.
Please submit your abstract via AIS Conference Management Module (click here). You first need to sign up to create a user account (or just sign in if you already signed up and have an active user account) for the AIS Conference Management Module. When you sign up, you will see options at the end. Please choose “Author” as your role.
After you submit your abstract, you will receive a confirmation email from AIS. If you do not receive a confirmation email or if you have any difficulty in submitting your abstract, please feel free to contact AIS via email at [email protected].
If your abstract is accepted (the notification will be sent out via emails by the end of May), you can make payment for registration on the Payment and Registration Page (click here).
Abstracts will be published on the conference webpage in electronic format after the conference.
Registration and Conference Fees
Registrations fees do not cover accommodation or food. Participants have to arrange their own accommodation and meals.
However, tea, coffee and cookies will be served throughout the conference.
STUDENT
Early Bird: 450 USD
PHD / PROFESSOR / INDUSTRY
Early Bird: 600 USD
CONFERENCE PROGRAM SCHEDULE
Click here to download the Program Schedule.
Click here to download the Poster List.
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Professor Dimos Poulikakos holds the Chair of Thermodynamics at ETH Zurich, where in 1996 he founded the Laboratory of Thermodynamics in Emerging Technologies. He was a Member of the Research Commission of ETH (2001-2005). He served as the Vice President of Research of ETH Zurich in the period 2005-2007. Professor Poulikakos was the ETH director of the IBM-ETH Binnig-Rohrer Nanotechnology center, a unique private-public partnership in nanotechnology at the interface of basic research and future-oriented applications (2008-2011). He served as the Head of the Mechanical and Process Engineering Department at ETH Zurich (2011-2014). As of Feb 1, 2024, Prof. Poulikakos is an emeritus Professor of ETH Zurich.
Learn more about Prof. Poulikakos
Dr. Poulikakos’ Keynote Title:
Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, UCSB, USA
A.B. from Harvard College in Cambridge, MA in 1971; Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Duke University in Durham, NC in 1976; Postdoctoral work at the University of Copenhagen among other institutions. Professor for 12 years at the University of Delaware in the Chemistry and Marine Studies programs before moving to UCSB in 1998. Dr. Waite was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2009 and is co-leader of IRG-1 for the new Materials Research Science & Engineering Center (MRSEC) at UCSB funded by NSF.
Dr. Waite’s Keynote Title:
Coming soon…
INVITED SPEAKERS
(in alphabetical order by last name)
University of Leeds, UK
Presentation Title: will be posted soon
University of Alberta, Canada
Presentation Title: will be posted soon
Penn State University, USA
Presentation Title: will be posted soon
University of Toronto, Canada
Presentation Title: New directions and insights into repellent surface design
Xiamen University, China
Presentation Title: will be posted soon
Pohang University of Science and Technology, South Korea
Presentation Title: will be posted soon
UNIST, South Korea
Presentation Title: will be posted soon
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia
Presentation Title: will be posted soon
The Univercity of Osaka, Japan
Presentation Title: will be posted soon
University of Michigan Ann Arbor, USA
Presentation Title: will be posted soon
Chinese Academy of Science, China
Presentation Title: will be posted soon
CONFERENCE CHAIR
Dr. Chang-Hwan Choi is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Stevens Institute of Technology. He acquired his BS (1995) and MS (1997) in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering from Seoul National University in Korea. He also earned his MS in Fluids, Thermal, and Chemical Processes from Brown University in 2002. Dr. Choi received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2006, specializing in MEMS/Nanotechnology and minoring in Fluid Mechanics and Biomedical Engineering. You may contact Dr. Choi at [email protected].
CONFERENCE CO-CHAIR
Benjamin Hatton Ben Hatton is a Professor in the Dep of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto, and also cross-appointed to Biomedical Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering. After his PhD (2005, UofT) in mesoporous self-assembly, he worked at the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS; Tsukuba, Japan), Bell Labs (NJ, USA) and Harvard University (2007-2012). Prof. Hatton leads the Bio-inspired Materials and Design Group. His group studies the surface properties of biomaterials and the relationship between surface microstructures, wetting, adhesion, and microbial contamination. Also, smart/active material design using microfluidics, and fabrication techniques to design hierarchical structure. Applications of this research include antimicrobial materials, non-fouling biomaterials, bio-inspired smart windows for buildings, self-assembly methods for drug encapsulation, and active gripping surfaces.
LOCAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Chair of the Local Organizing Committee
Materials Science and Engineering, University of Toronto, Canads
Department of Applied Physics, University of Granada, Spain
TECHNICAL COMMITTEE CHAIR
Dr. Atsushi Hozumi is a senior principal scientist of National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan. He holds Ph.D. from Nagoya University in 1997. He joined National Industrial Research Institute of Nagoya (NIRIN), Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), Japan in 1999 (reorganized as AIST in 2001). He spent 2007~2008 as a visiting scholar at University of Bristol, England (Prof. Stephen Mann’s group) and as a visiting professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA (Prof. Thomas J. McCarthy’s group). His research focuses on biomimetics and related materials/surfaces, the control of surface wettability using monolayers, polymer brushes, hybrid films, gels, and their practical applications. Currently, he is a visiting professor at Aichi Institute of Technology (AIT), Japan, a chair of the steering committee of the Research Group on Biomimetics, The Society of Polymer Science, Japan and serves on the editorial boards of the Materials Letters, Elsevier.
TECHNICAL COMMITTEE CO-CHAIR
Dr. Sanghyuk Wooh studied chemical and biological engineering and received his Ph.D. in 2013 at Seoul National University in Seoul, Korea. Then, he went as a post-doc to the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany, by receiving Alexander von Humboldt Postdoc Fellowship. In 2017, he became assistant professor for Department of Chemical Engineering at the Chung-Ang University and became associate professor at the same department in 2021. His research focuses on interface and surface engineering. He is especially interested in soft matter interfaces, wetting, and adhesion.
TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Swansea University, UK
Materials Science Institute of Seville, Spain
Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Ottawa, Canada
Department of Chemical Engineering, McGill University, Canada
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, UNIST, S. Korea
School of Electrical Engineering, KAIST, South Korea
Department of Nature-Inspired Nanoconvergence Systems, Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials (KIMM), South Korea
School of Chemistry, The University of Sydney, Australia
University of Basel, Switzerland
Department of Mechanical and Plastics Engineering, University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt/European University of Technology, Germany
Bayerisches Polymerinstitut, Universität Bayreuth, Germany
Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, University of Illinois Chicago, USA
Department of Materials Science, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
IIT Central Research Labs Genova, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy
Department of Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology, Ariel University, Israel
Deparment of Physics, Universidad de Murcia, Spain
Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Droplet and Soft Matter Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan
Institute of Fundamental and Frontier Sciences, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China
School of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering, University of Acron, USA
CAS Key Laboratory, China
Applied Chemistry, Osaka Institute of Technology, Japan
Department of Atomic and Molecular Physics, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India
Faculty of Materials Science and Applied Chemistry, Riga Technical University, Latvia
College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, China
Department of Aerospace Engineering, Iowa State University, USA
School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, S. Korea
Biological and Environmental Engineering, Cornell University, USA
University Ecclesiastical Academy of Thessaloniki, Greece
Department of Mechanical Engineering, POSTECH, South Korea
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Seoul National University, S. Korea
School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh, UK
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kyung Hee University, South Korea
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Pennsylvania
Suzhou Institute for Advanced Research, the Chinese University of Science and Technology of China
Department of Engineering Mechanics, Tsinghua University, China
School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh, UK
Department of Mechanical Engineering, KAIST, South Korea
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Waterloo, Canada
School of Chemical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Korea
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Seoul National University, South Korea
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University, USA
Institut Catala de Nanociencia i Nanotecnologia, Spain
Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST, Korea
Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, North Carolina State University, USA
Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Connecticut, USA
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University College London (UCL), UK
Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Department of Mechanical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong
Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Wettability Science & Technology
University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria
Department of Mechanical Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University
Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), Seoul, S. Korea
School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
Co-Host Institution
coming soon
Partnering Journals
EXHIBITORS
STUDENT AWARDS
The following journals are sponsoring four “Best Presentation Awards” for young investigators (Ph.D. students), each valued at 200 USD.
We extend our special thanks to MICROMACHINES for sponsoring two of these awards.
The awards will be presented to the best oral and poster presenters during the closing ceremony.
CONFERENCE MAILING LIST
If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]. You may also contact conference chair Dr. Chang-Hwan Choi at [email protected].
Join our mailing list and receive conference updates. Please select “NISE Conferences” in the drop-down menu.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Venue
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About University of Toronto
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