This volume represents a collection of papers from five distinct yet related symposia: Symposium L, ‘Biomimetic Nanoscale Platforms, Particles, and Scaffolds for Biomedical Applications’; Symposium M, ‘Bioinspired Directional Surfaces - From Nature to Engineered Textured Surfaces’; Symposium Q, ‘Functional and Responsive Materials Exploiting Peptide and Protein Self-Assembly’; Symposium R, ‘Fundamentals of Assembly in Biomolecular and Biomimetic Systems’; and Symposium S, ‘Directed Self-Assembly for Nanopatterning’. This volume is thus the first for which the papers are from a larger group of thematically related symposia, with emphasis on bioinspiration and biomimicry, self-assembly and natural materials.