Every second year top biofilm researchers from all over the world meet up at the Biofilms conference to discuss bacterial biofilms in the broadest sense. It attracts a multidisciplinary array of researchers working within biofilm ecology, evolution, genetics, physiology, biophysics, as well as developing new technologies to control biofilm.

Biofilms, or ‘cities of microbes’, comprise microorganisms of any group where the individual cells stick to each other and often also adhere to a surface. [1] They are embedded in a slimy extracellular matrix and are usually found on solid material submerged in or exposed to an aqueous solution like on teath as dental plaque.[2]

The Biofilms conference has been held in several European venues since 2004 and this year assoc. prof. Rikke Louise Meyer and professor Daniel Otzen hosted the conference here at Aarhus University on 27-29 May 2018.

310 researchers from 33 countries participated in the conference to hear and talk about topics like Molecular mechanisms in biofilm formation, the biofilm matrix, bacterial attachment, modelling biofilms, biofilm ecology, evolution in biofilms, biofilm control and novel methods for biofilm characterization. 

"Biofilm is a major problem in many different industries where bacteria contaminate the surface of e.g. heat exchangers, production equipment, or biomedical implants. Many of the lectures and posters shown at the congress testifies to the strength by collaborating across disciplines within this field," said Rikke Louise Meyer, chairman of the Scientific Committee.

Read more about the Biofilms 8 conference here: http://conferences.au.dk/Biofilms8/

Meyer and Otzen co-organised the conference together with researchers from Danish Technological Institute, University of Southern Denmark, Technical University of Denmark, Aalborg University and Montana State University (US).

Assoc. prof. Rikke Louise Meyer is an expert in microbiology and is heading the Biofilms group at Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center (iNANO)

Professor Daniel Otzen has specialised in biophysics and molecular biology and is heading the Protein Biophysics Group at iNANO.

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