The self-organization of amphiphiles in water creates various lamellar and nonlamellar assemblies depending on concentration, temperature, and pressure.  Hydrated amphiphiles can yield quite complex lyotropic liquid crystals including lamellar (bilayer) and inverted nonlamellar phases, i.e., the inverted hexagonal (HII) and various bicontinuous cubic (QII) phases.  Such morphologies have also been observed for block copolymers that have a general tendency of each block to self-aggregate and form domains.   Although the concept of self-organization is certainly not a new idea in the life sciences, it can also be usefully employed for the synthesis of new materials.  The organized nature of hydrated amphiphiles offers several attractive features for applications in both biological and materials sciences, e.g. catalysis, separations, surface modification, therapeutics, diagnosis, as well as model systems for probing signal transduction, molecular recognition, among others.   Advances in each of these areas is a consequence of fundamental and applied research in many laboratories.  Indeed in recent years a critical level of activity has been attained that appears to permit even more rapid advances in the future.  In many cases the potential utility requires a means to make the self-organized systems more robust.  In some cases the desired properties can be attained through surface charge or the association of polymers at the assembly surface, whereas in other instances polymerization of the assembly itself is more appropriate.  Our research emphasizes the latter case with particular emphasis on a strategy that relies on the formation of a self-organized assembly from designed reactive amphiphiles and the subsequent polymerization of the amphiphiles in the assembly.   The lessons learned in lyotropic liquid crystals can also be applied to form rod-like polymers from thermotropic liquid crystalline compounds.