Welcome to Davos
On behalf of the AO Research Institute, I would like to welcome all participants to the 10th General Assembly and meeting of the Swiss Society of the Biomaterials (SSB) in Davos.
The alternate hosting of the SSB meeting by private sponsoring companies and by academic or research foundations is unique among biomaterial societies world-wide. This alternation opens the society's outlook and enriches the knowledge of our society, as well as keeping SSB company sponsors at the forefront of today's research within Switzerland.

These small meetings are a place for making friends, discussing, networking and initiating new collaborations. Of high importance is that they promote new young researchers to show their own work (often for a first time at a congress), learn from others and be seen by prospective future employers.
Our Society currently stands at over 150 members and with the newly introduced Laboratory membership this number steadily increases. Proportionally to the small population of Switzerland, this would make us the largest national society in Europe and possibly world-wide.
Our society is very well represented in the areas of dentistry and orthopaedics, but I would also like to encourage our members to encourage people working within less well represented areas such as vascular work, the stent area, soft tissue repair including cartilage, tissue engineering and to join our society. We also welcome clinicians in these areas to join who have interest in research. Our invited lecturer is the president of the European Society for Biomaterials (ESB) and I would like to encourage all of you to join the ESB and not only attend ESB meetings. I believe ESB meetings have steadily improved over the last 10 years and are now leading world biomaterials research (based on presentations at the world biomaterials conference in Sydney in May this year).

Finally, I would like to thank AO Research Institute for allowing me so much time to help promotion of the SSB, initiate the SSB member's e-mail address list and together with Miss Sonia Wahl organise this year's meeting here in Davos.

R. Geoff Richards
Congress Organiser, SSB Secretary.
AO Research Institute, Davos.