On December 24-27, 2016, the Second International Academic Conference 'Photoalignment and Photopatterning in Soft Materials' was solemnly convened in Nagoya, Japan. The Conference offered a professional communication platform for international peers in liquid crystal photo-orientation and other fields. This academic conference is a highly interdisciplinary international conference that covers photochemistry, photophysics, polymer chemistry, material processing, optics and devices.

The participants included researchers and business representatives in the field of liquid crystal from home and abroad, including Prof. Martin Schadt, Prof. Tomiki Ikeda, Prof. Takahiro Seki, Prof. Dirk J Broer, etc. Their brilliant academic reports brought a lot to everyone.

Teacher Jia Wei, Dr. Jiuan Lyu, and students Yuyun Liu, Lang Qin, and Wei Gu of our group participated in the Conference. Teacher Yu's lecture entitled "Liquid Crystal Polymers and Bioinspired Applications" aroused strong interest from the audience. Lang Qin gave an oral lecture entitled "A tristable chiral molecular switch"; student Wei Gu’s poster stood out from the crowd of presenters and won the Best Poster Award, which fully demonstrated the strength and style of the students in our group.