Affected by COVID-19, the 11th International Liquid Crystal Elastomer Conference (ILCEC 2021) was held online in Guangzhou from November 15 to 16, 2021. The conference gathered well-known experts and scholars in the field of liquid crystal elastomers at home and abroad, as well as representatives from industry. The conference focused on the latest progress in soft actuators, reconfigurable networks, advanced manufacturing methods, bionic materials, theory and simulation, and material physics. Professor Yanlei Yu of our group was invited to give an invitation report entitled "Trace liquid manipulation based on photodeformable liquid crystal polymers". The related work of photodeformable liquid crystal polymer and all-optical microfluidic chip of our group was introduced. The all-optical microfluidic chips can be used in the fields of inorganic acid-base indication, organic catalytic reaction and protein biological detection, etc., which benefits everyone a lot.