The renewed and increasing interest in lipid self-assembly, phase behaviour and interfacial properties can be related to both a much improved insight in biological systems and the applications of lipids in food and pharmaceutical industry; in the latter, the development of drug delivery systems based on lipids has become in focus. Amphiphilic systems comprise lipids, surfactants as well as different types of polymers, including block and graft copolymers. Research on biological amphiphiles has often been conducted separate from research on synthetic ones. However, in recent years a very fruitful convergence between the two fields has evolved. These new perspectives on fundamental research and applications of lipids are discussed in these proceedings from an international symposium on "Lipid and Polymer Lipid-systems," October 2000 in Chia Laguna in Italy - a joint undertaking of Prof. Maura Monduzzi at Cagliari University, Italy and Camurus Lipid Research Foundation, Lund, Sweden.

Leading Nordic-Baltic scientists and their colleagues from other countries present recent research on a broad range of topics in surface and colloid science: adhesion, adsorption processes, characterization of solid/liquid and solid/polymer interfaces, chemical and particle depositions, colloid stability, emulsification and encapsulation, interfacial reactions, new surfactants, polymer-surfactant interactions, self-assembly processes, and functionalized surfaces for bio- and chemosensors. The papers were presented at the 1st Nordic-Baltic Meeting on Surface and Colloid Science, which was held in Vilnius, Lithuania on August 21-25, 1999, as a continuation of the traditional Scandinavian Symposium on Surface Chemistry.