In most developed countries, there is an increasing societal demand for human health understanding and progress, for example in the field of regenerative medicine, the treatment of infectious diseases and the development of nanomedicine. Within these different fields of life sciences the pertinence of biocompatible functional polymers is growing more and more apparent in a variety of applications at different material length scales, from the macroscopic implant to sub-micron range constructs down to the isolated bioactive elicitor molecule.

The scientific activities of this Area of Excellence can be divided into 2 distinct main themes, namely Axis I. Decoy Materials and Systems and Axis II. Polymers for nanoimaging in infectiology as shown in the previous figure.