MacroMolecular Complexes

The 15th IUPAC MacroMolecular Complexes Conference (MMC-15) was held 13-16 August 2013 in Greenville, South Carolina, USA and Clemson University, South Carolina, USA. Full details of the conference may be found at www.clemson.edu/MMC-15

The technical program of the conference featured a slate of eight internationally renowned plenary speakers, headlined by Cato Laurencin, MD, Ph.D., the CEO of the Connecticut Institute for Clinical and Translational Science, Director of the Institute for Regenerative Engineering and the Van Dusen Endowed Chair in Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Connecticut. Laurencin gave the opening plenary on “Macromolecular Design in Regenerative Engineering.” Among the other plenary speakers were Hiroyuki Nishide of Waseda University, Japan and Mkhulu Mathe of the CSIR, South Africa. Nishade delivered the closing plenary address on “Redox Polymer-Mediated/Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells.”

All plenary addresses were the first-convening of the morning sessions or the afternoon sessions and thus were attended by all participants. The conferees then participated in three possible technical tracks, each anchored by one or more invited keynote speakers in the morning session and one or more in the afternoon session. The three tracks were macromolecular complexes in Global Health/Sustainability, Biotechnology and Energy. Among the keynote speakers were Seda Kizilel (Koç University, Turkey), Jindřich Kopeček (University of Utah, USA), Eva Harth (Vanderbilt University, USA), and Masayoshi Higuchi (National Institute for Materials Science, Japan).

This year’s MMC conference was attended by 143 participants representing 22 different countries. A full 43% of all members of the International Advisory Board were in attendance. While this is a good percentage, a higher level of participation among IAB membership is expected. There were 96 technical papers and a poster session of 25 posters. Included on the program was guided tour of the facilities of Milliken, a world leader in the manufacture of advanced textiles that is headquartered in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Also included on the program was a half-day hands-on workshop on biosensors fabrication and characterization. The workshop was organized by Biodot, a conference sponsor, and was hosted in the facilities at Clemson University, by the Center for Bioelectronics, Biosensors and Biochips.

The social program of the conference included a boat tour and picnic on Lake Hartwell in Anderson, South Carolina that was sponsored by Innovate Anderson, an economic development agency; and a backyard picnic of traditional Southern cuisine, with a reception, poster sessions, and an awards banquet.

At the conference awards banquet, the MMC Founder’s Award was given to Hiroyuki Nishide “For Outstanding Contributions to MacroMolecular Complexes,” the MMC Pioneer Award was given to Yoshi Okamoto “For Visionary Leadership in Initiating the Organization and Running of MMC Meetings,” and the MMC Notable Contribution Award was given jointly to Heikki Tenhu and Vladimir Aseyevi “For Successfully Organizing and Running MMC-14.”

The poster award recipients were:

Timothy R. Olsen (3rd place) (Clemson University) for his paper entitled “Accelerated Iron Oxide Nanoparticle Degradation Mediated by Polyester Encapsulation within Cellular Spheroids.”

Rayford H Bulloch (2nd place) (Linköping University) for his paper entitled “Solution Processable Conjugated Polymers Spanning the Color Palette as Used in Electrochromic Devices.”

Takuya Kimura (1st place) (Chuo University, Tokyo) for his paper entitled “Core-shell Structured Protein Cluster of Hemoglobin and Human Serum Albumin as an Artificial O₂-Carrier.”

At a time of some considerable difficulty in raising financial support for conferences from companies, MMC-15 benefitted from local corporate support from ABTECH Scientific, Inc., Milliken, and Michelin. Additional support was provided by divisions of the American Chemical Society, including PMSE, POLY, and the Western Carolinas Section of the ACS. Finally, support was also provided by the Departments of Bioengineering, Chemistry, and Chemical and Bimolecular Engineering at Clemson University.

The MMC-16 conference has been scheduled for Poland in 2016 and will be held at the Wroclaw University of Technology (WUT). Andrzej W. Trochimczuk of the Politechnika Wrocławska will serve as the General Conference Chair.