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1Dr Mallick was an internationally renowned material scientist with a strong focus on biological and medicinal sciences. As a material scientist, he was always open to other scientific disciplines and innovative technology routes as such the bioinspired approach. He strongly developed the new field of bioinspired materials, especially for biomedical applications. Most recently, he headed the Tissue Engineering and Ceramic Processing research group (TiECeP), which includes a large number of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as doctoral candidates from the natural and engineering sciences. His research and teaching was focused on the synthesis, structure, processing and characterisation of materials including ceramics, glass and glass-ceramics, polymers, metals and biomedical materials. His other areas of significant research impact included functional, engineering and electroceramics for mobile and telecommunication applications as well as superconductors. He published nearly 100 refereed papers in leading peer-reviewed high-impact international journals, as well as a number of contributed/invited conference papers.The Dr Kajal Mallick memorial issue honours his life's work in his various fields of research. It includes part of his own work and contributions from his friends and partners in sciences. Major contributions come from the area of biomedical science, and novel scaffold fabrication and bone regenerative medicine. This issue further encompasses innovative ceramic manufacturing techniques and bioinspired materials such as optical structures and theoretical consideration on the toucan beak.The first paper by Winnet and Mallick 2 and accompanied work derives from the renowned Warwick Manufacturing Group and reflects the research of Dr Kajal Mallick. The topic of this paper is the fabrication of porous 3D bioscaffolds by adaptive foam reticulation. Highly interconnected and porous hydroxyapatite (HA) scaffolds with controllable macroporosity and microporosity were produced using the adaptive foam reticulation technique, combining foam reticulation and freeze-casting methodologies. The developed process yielded an optimised macropore structure from the polymeric template. Designed micropores are introduced into the struts using the porogen approach. The cell culture and assay test distinctly showed that the scaffolds are not cytotoxic and can be used as bone grafts.The next paper by Gu et al.3 deals with the evaluation of the dynamic nanomechanical behaviour of healthy compared with disordered (osteogenesis imperfecta (OI)) human cortical bone. The assessment of the viscoelastic properties of bone is of profound interest, because the time-dependent mechanical properties relate to the fracture risk of bone under dynamic loading. The authors studied the nanomechanical behaviour of the intact, demineralised and OI human cortical bone specimens by dynamic nanoindentation. Their results suggest that the viscoelasticity of bone is primarily attributable to the mineral component. This study is a valuable ...