I'm in the very fortunate position that my job requires me to do a fair amount of travel, often to places where I have not been before. My most recent destination was Seoul, South Korea, a location that had been on my bucket list for some time.

The reason for my travel was to attend the first ACS Publications and IBS Forum, an event hosted and supported by Yonsei University and organized by Cindy Burrows of the University of Utah; Jinwoo Cheon of the Institute for Basic Science’s Center for Nanomedicine, based at Yonsei University; and Peidong Yang of the University of California, Berkeley.

The theme of the forum—“Nanomaterials for Energy and Life Sciences”—could not have been more topical or relevant to the research interests of the host country. South Korea is a global leader in scientific research, and much of its R&D spending is concentrated in technology and materials.

At the forum we heard presentations from world-leading scientists working at the forefront of nanomaterials chemistry.

In the energy session, Yang told attendees about his cyborgian designs for solar fuel production: hybrid systems that combine inorganic materials and biological catalysts. The session also featured the University of Alberta’s Jillian Buriak, who explained how her group is applying design-of-experiment principles and machine learning to optimize organic solar cell efficiency; Sungkyunkwan University’s Nam-Gyu Park, who reported improved photovoltaic performance of solid-state perovskite solar cells through the development of cost-effective materials and more efficient coating procedures; and National University of Singapore’s Loh Kian Ping, who reported on his work toward large-scale synthesis of covalent organic frameworks for applications such as lithium–carbon dioxide batteries.

In the bioscience session, Harvard University’s Joanna Aizenberg talked about how her group is taking inspiration from biological structures to design multifunctional, adaptive materials for photonic, catalytic (for example, air purification), and sensing (for example, toxin detection) applications. The University of Chicago’s Bozhi Tian, a member of C&EN’s Talented 12 class of 2017, also participated and reported on his work on the chemical dynamics of soft-hard interfaces.