"The 6th Hoffman Family Symposium: International Symposium on Smart Biomaterials" was held at the auditorium in the WPI-MANA building, Namiki-site, NIMS on September 9 (Monday), 2019.

The symposium included all kinds of topics on "Smart Biomaterials", such as therapeutic treatments, diagnostics/imaging, and related basic sciences, focusing on the development of new biomaterials. The 6th symposium was a follow-up to the International Symposium on Smart Biomaterials, which had been held at NIMS (2010, 2014), in Korea (2015), in Taiwan (2016), and in China (2017).

In this symposium, we invited Prof. Allan S. Hoffman, the leading expert in smart polymer research, and Prof. Patrick Stayton, the director of Molecular Engineering & Sciences from the University of Washington, USA, and Prof. In-Kyu Park from Chonnam National University Medical School, Korea, as well as 6 speakers from Japan.

At the banquet, MANA's local heroes "Smart Polymer Rangers" appeared and presented various possibilities of smart polymer materials.

The symposium had 113 participants from universities, companies, corporate research institutes, and other national research institutions. It was a great opportunity to reconfirm the importance of fusion research across materials science and biotechnology, regarding smart polymer materials.