Prof. Aurelio Mateo-Alonso (POLYMAT–UPV/EHU–Ikerbasque), FantastiCOF coordinator, organised and chaired POLYMAT Spotlight 2026 – International Workshop on Macromolecular Materials, held at Miramar Palace in San Sebastián from 29 June to 2 July 2026.
The event was open to all FantastiCOF researchers and brought together international scientists and early-career researchers to discuss emerging macromolecular materials through lectures, contributed talks, flash presentations and poster sessions.
The plenary speakers were Robert Gilliard (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA), Kenichiro Itami (RIKEN, Japan), Daniel Maspoch (Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Spain), Akif Tezcan (University of California, San Diego, USA), Tanja Weil (Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Germany) and Frank Würthner (University of Würzburg, Germany).
Their lectures covered molecular nanocarbons, functional nanosystems, biological nanomaterials and other advances at the interface of molecular chemistry and materials science.Invited keynote lectures were delivered by Juan Casado (University of Málaga, Spain), Jeanne Crassous (CNRS–Rennes Institute of Chemical Sciences, France), Birgit Esser (University of Ulm, Germany), Ramesh Jasti (University of Oregon, USA), Malika Jeffries-EL (Boston University, USA), Niveen Khashab (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia), Zhichang Liu (Westlake University, China), Marina Petrukhina (University at Albany, USA), Irena G. Stará (Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic) and Jiaobing Wang (Sun Yat-Sen University, China).
The workshop provided opportunities for scientific exchange, dissemination and collaboration relevant to FantastiCOF.
It was promoted through UPV/EHU’s Summer Courses Foundation (UIK), the Royal Society of Chemistry’s event listing and POLYMAT’s LinkedIn account, with subsequent coverage in POLYMAT’s conference report.