The idea of this workshop is to bring together international experts in the field of the mechanics of networks (e.g. gel, polymer and biological networks), to discuss recent progress and insights from computational, theoretical and experimental approaches [1-27]. This field is still young especially concerning modeling aspects, due to the computational challenges related to the complex molecular structures which are crucial, in many cases, for relaxation dynamics and mechanical responses on large scales.

In the recent years, however, the computer power and new parallel coding techniques like GPGPU or large scale MPI programming techniques has allowed for significant progress in accessing reasonable time and length scales to address questions that were difficult to tackle before. Also on the experimental side, new approaches combining different techniques (e.g. various types of imaging, advanced light scattering techniques and the use of mecanophores) allow for an investigation on a more mesoscopic scale of the complex dynamics, being able to probe scales that can be modeled within, for example, MD simulations.

In addition, recent theoretical developments now address specifically the non-linear and fracture response of network materials, providing new concepts and ideas to be tested in experiments and simulations. There seems to be a unique opportunity, at this point, in combining such efforts to develop a new understanding of network dynamics, closely related to their technological applications. This is why we think it is extremely timely and important to bring together the different relevant communities with the help of the Les Houches School of Physics and CECAM.

The ambition of this workshop is to initiate and intensify the discussions between different communities working on the formation and the mechanical properties of network forming systems in physics, engineering, chemistry and biology, bridging the gap between experimental observations, simulations and coarse grained theoretical descriptions. We intend to bring together a group of leading experts in the field of computational modeling of networks (molecular dynamics and mesoscopic scale descriptions) with  leading experts in the experimental community. We aim at: (i) identifying the most important open questions in the field regarding the link between structure and mechanical response, (ii) analyzing the computational approaches needed to address these questions and (iii) building a consistent multi-scale approach of the network dynamics which combines the micro, meso and macro scales.