The 2011 Spring Meeting of the European Materials Research Society (E-MRS) will be held at the Acropolis Congress Centre in Nice, France, from May 9-13, and is being organized in conjunction with the International Conference on Advanced Materials (ICAM) of the International Union of Materials Research Societies (IUMRS). This E-MRS meeting will be the 29th of the series started in 1983, and will provide the opportunity to celebrate the 20th anniversary of IUMRS. It promises to be an exciting and special event. The scientific programme will highlight the latest advances in international materials developments and key novel applications. A special focus will be given to Energy and to the role played by materials research in addressing the energy needs of society. To this end a Bilateral Conference on Energy, jointly organized by E-MRS and MRS, is being organised as a back-to-back event with the programme and will feature 11 topical symposia on energy. This will be the first in a series of bilateral E-MRS - MRS conferences which are to be held annually and hosted alternatively in Europe and USA.In total the Conference will consist of 27 parallel symposia grouped in five different clusters: Thin Films & Nanomaterials, Electronics & Photonics, Advanced Fabrication & Characterization, Organic & Biomaterials, Energy. In addition to the annual E-MRS Graduate Students Awards E-MRS will also inaugurate a new award, the EU-40 Materials Prize, which is specifically for researchers aged less than 40 with exceptional promise for leadership who have already made outstanding and innovative contributions to Materials Research in Europe. The beneficiary of the award will also make a presentation during the plenary session.Several one-day workshops and round table discussions will be a feature of the conference and a large exhibition, with a specific emphasis on energy, will be held in Nice during the meeting. In reality the E-MRS 2011 Spring Meeting will consist of many international scientific events, a llin one place, at one time