Of central importance in personal care, food, pharmaceutics, and biotechnology, biomaterials and biosubstrates formed the subject of the fifth meeting of the Royal Society-Unilever INDO-UK Forum in Materials Science and Engineering. The programme for this meeting dwelt on two principal foci: (i) new advances in the measurement of the supramolecular and colloidal structures, and (ii) the relationship of these structures to the functional properties of the materials.This volume is a compilation of selected papers presented at the meeting by world-renowned scientists who included, among others, Prof E D T Atkins (Bristol, UK), Prof N Chandrakumar (Chennai, India), Dr A M Hermansson (Goteborg, Sweden), Dr V J Morris (Norwich, UK), Prof P Walstra (Wageningen, The Netherlands), Dr V Prakash (Mysore, India), Prof S B Ross-Murphy (King's College, London, UK), Prof G E Rogers (Adelaide, Australia), Dr T Kealey (Cambridge, UK) and Prof N Appaji Rao (Bangalore, India).