The European Society for Biomaterials (ESB) was founded in 1976 so at this year's conference in Antwerp 7-11 September a Special Session on the history and activities of ESB over the last 50 years was chaired by Liz Tanner and Gino Ambrosio (University of Naples and periodic visitor to the IRC in Biomedical Materials). Liz was Secretary General of ESB 2005-2009 as well as the IRC in Biomedical Materials running the 2001 ESB conference in London.

The session speakers included Josep Planell (former QMC Materials PhD student more later Rector of the Open University of Catalonia) and Liz. The subjects covered included changes in the requirements and assessments of biomaterials in the last 50 year, the newer applications of biomaterials including tissue engineering and lab-on-a-chip, some of the current research areas of SEMS. Other discussions included the use of AI in Biomaterials discovery and teaching methods when providing distance learning versus in person lectures.

Professor Julien Gautrot gave an invited talk at ESB in the session on Women's Health discussing engineering niches and systems to model ovarian cancer.