This conference serves as a global forum for discussing new methodologies, concepts, and issues connecting materials and society from various perspectives, fostering interdisciplinary research and innovation.

For more than 19 years, SAM conferences have been an international forum for exchanging on new methodologies, new concepts and new issues that connect materials and society from different perspectives, ranging from social to engineering sciences, from thermodynamics over life cycle assessment to ethics and economy..

As such, they are a laboratory for thought and for knowledge experiments, which have produced about 800 papers and introduced some of the best intuitions in these areas. Issues and questions sitting at the heart of contemporary societal challenges and of expected paradigm shifts are also being covered as a kind of application lab. 

Disciplines like Material Flow Analysis or Life Cycle Assessment have traditionally been an important part of the meetings, focusing mainly on new directions and methodologies, but with room also for innovative case studies.    

Other important thematic pillars are approches rooted in social science, economics or materials science, being the focus of SAM Conferences  always on pluridisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity. Works that combine different disciplines or approaches in an innovative way are therefore particularly welcome.

The 20th edition reflected the same level of curiosity, inquisitiveness, intellectual boldness and innovative thinking as the previous ones!