The first online academic forum on “Frontiers in Bionic Engineering” organizedby the ISBE, and sponsored by Wuhan University and the Key Laboratory of Bionic Engineering of Jilin University, was held on 27 August 2020 via VooV Meeting (outside China) and Tencent Meeting (within China) simultaneously. The forum was co-hosted by Professor Longjian Xue from Wuhan University and Professor Zhihui Qian from Jilin University. Professor Jianqiao Li, The General Secretary of the ISBE delivered a speech at the opening. Professor Zhiguang Guo, the chairman of the Youth Commission of the Society, also presented at the forum.

Professor Hao Bai from the State Key Laboratory of Chemical Engineering of Zhejiang University,the winner of the National Science Foundation for Outstanding Young Scholars, was invited to share his team's latest research results and experience. As we all know, to achieve multifunctionality, biological materials mainly depend onbuilding sophisticated multiscale architecture, while synthetic materials rely mainly on the diversity of constituents. Professor Bai’s team organically combined these two strategies and developed new materials with multifunctionality throughgreen fabrication approaches. Professor Bai specifically demonstrated a series of bionic multifunctional materials with excellent performance produced by the ice-templating technique.

More than 280 scholars and postgraduates from over 40 universities and research institutions around the world participated in this online academic exchange, including Wuhan University, Jilin University, Zhejiang University, Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics of CAS, Tsinghua University, Beihang University, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Sun Yat-Sen University, Dalian University of Technology, Tianjin University, University of Salford at UK, Polytechnic University of Milan at Italy, University of Mpumalanga at South Africa, etc. The presentation was so attractive that it aroused heated discussions among the attendees.

The “Frontiers in Bionic Engineering” online academic forum is a series of academic exchange activities initiated by the YouthCommission of the ISBE. The forum has obtained most support of the scholars and postgraduates,and showed the latest research highlights and progress in the field of functional biomimetic materials. It received warm responses from the participants and played an important role in expanding the exchange and cooperation among the presented scholars.