The 45th International Conference and Expo on Advanced Ceramics and Composites (ICACC 2021) was held virtually on February 8–11, 2021. ICACC 2021 had the largest number of attendees for a virtual conference to date. The week-long conference welcomed 836 attendees, including 236 students, from 41 countries to participate in 18 symposia and four focused sessions, which featured over 680 submitted abstracts. Thirty-two live networking sessions also took place between sessions.

On February 09th, Politecnico Di Torino Full Professor Monica Ferraris delivered the aptly named Bridge Building Award lecture “Joining and integration: Building bridges between materials”, presenting also the results achieved in NEXTOWER project.