The incorporation of biomolecules and living cells into device formats is a challenging task, but has great potential for biophysical studies and the development of highly sensitive diagnostic platforms. Our lab has developed several bioconjugation strategies for the facile generation of biomolecular patterns on glass and metal oxide surfaces. For complex designs, light-initiated photopatterning techniques have been developed for the creation of well-defined patterns comprising multiple types of cells and biomolecules. This technology is being used to improve our understanding of biological interactions at the single-cell level, with a particular emphasis on the generation of artificial symbiotic relationships between microbial organisms. This patterning technology is also being used to generate multicomponent networks of enzymes within microfluidic systems and arrays of proteins with interesting folding properties.