Wood is probably the first material that has been engineered by man. Because of its biological origin, it remains a highly complex anisotropic and discontinuous material. Today’s technologies provide new ways of designing wood based products for a wide variety of applications, raising on the other hand new scientific challenges. Wood Science is by nature a multidisciplinary research field at the interface between biology, physics, and chemistry. In the near future, temperate forests will constitute a unique resource for engineered products, green molecules, and energy. All three application fields will have to cooperate in order to develop new composite products processed with sustainable chemistry and renewable energy. It is essential that multidisciplinary research in wood and wood-based composites support this socio-economical issue through innovation.
