Metin Akay is currently the founding chair of the new Biomedical Engineering Department and the John S. Dunn professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Houston. He is the founding editor-in-chief of the Biomedical Engineering Book Series published by the Wiley and IEEE Press and the Wiley Encyclopedia of Biomedical Engineering. He established the Annual International Summer School on Biocomplexity from Gene to System sponsored by the NSF and the IEEE EMBS and the IEEE EMBS Special Topic Conference on Neural Engineering. He is also the chair of the IEEE EMBS Neuroengineering Technical Committee. He was the program chair of the International IEEE EMBS 2001 and the co-chair of the International IEEE EMBS 2006.
Dr. Akay is a recipient of the IEEE EMBS Early Career and IEEE EMBS Service awards, the first Information Technology Applications in Biomedicine (ITAB) Leadership award as well an IEEE Third Millenium Medal and is a fellow of IEEE, IOP, AIMBE, and AAAS. His Neural Engineering and Informatics Lab is interested in developing an intelligent system for detecting coronary artery disease and investigating the effect of nicotine on the dynamics of ventral tegmental area dopamine neural networks.
Emery N. Brown is the Warren M. Zapol Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Associate Director of the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, Co-Director of the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Program, and a professor of computational neuroscience and health sciences and technology at MIT. He is also an anesthesiologist at MGH. Dr. Brown received his B.A. (magna cum laude) in Applied Mathematics from Harvard College, his M.A. in statistics from Harvard University, his M.D. (magna cum laude) from Harvard Medical School and a Ph.D. in statistics from Harvard University. He is an anesthesiologist-statistician whose methodology research develops signal processing algorithms to characterize how the brain represents and transmits information. His experimental research uses a systems neuroscience approach to study how anesthetic drugs act in the brain to create the state of general anesthesia. Dr. Brown is a member of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Board of Directors, NSF Mathematical and Physical Sciences Advisory Committee, and the Board of Directors of the International Anesthesia Research Society. Dr. Brown is a fellow of the IEEE, the American Statistical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Brown is the recipient of a 2007 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, the 2011 Jerome Sacks Award from the National Institute of Statistical Sciences, and a 2012 NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award.
Shu Chien is University Professor of Bioengineering & Medicine and Director of Institute of Engineering in Medicine at UCSD, where he was Founding Chair of Department of Bioengineering. He is a world leader in molecular, cellular and integrative studies on bioengineering and physiology in health and disease. He served as President of Microcirculatory Society, American Physiological Society, Biomedical Engineering Society, International Society of Biorheology, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. He is member of all four US National Academies: National Academy of Science, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a member of Academia Sinica in Taiwan and Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing (Foreign Member). He has received numerous awards and honors, including Landis Award, Zweifach Award, Fahraeus Medal, Melville Medal (twice), Poiseuille Medal, and Founders Award of National Academy of Engineering. He is the only living Honorary Member of Chinese Association of Physiological Sciences and IEEE EMBS. In 2009, he received the Presidential Prize in Life Sciences in Taiwan. In 2011, he received from President Obama the National Medal of Science, the highest honor for scientists and engineers in USA.
Bin He is Professor and Head of Department of Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He was Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Biomedical Engineering, and served from 2012-2017 as Director of Institute for Engineering in Medicine at the University of Minnesota. Dr. He’s research interests cover a broad spectrum in biomedical engineering, including neuroengineering, biomedical imaging, cardiovascular engineering, and bioinstrumentation. He has made significant contributions to electrophysiological source imaging, brain-computer interface, neuromodulation and tissue electrical property imaging. His pioneering research was featured by Nature, BBC, CNN, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NBC, CBS, ABC, Scientific American, Economist, Fox News, among others. Dr. He is a recipient of the IEEE Biomedical Engineering Award, the Academic Career Achievement Award and Distinguished Service Award from the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, the Outstanding Research Award from the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology, and the Established Investigator Award from the American Heart Association, among others.
Dr. He has published over 240 peer reviewed articles in core international journals and delivered over 300 keynote, plenary and invited talks and seminars in international conferences and institutions worldwide. He was a Past President of IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS), the Conference Chair of the 31st Annual International Conference of IEEE EMBS (2009), and Co-Chair of Scientific Committee of World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering (2012). Dr. He is a Fellow of IEEE, BMES, and AIMBE. He is an elected member and the chair of the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering.
Prof Hunter completed an engineering degree in 1971 in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, a Master of Engineering degree in 1972 (Auckland) on solving the equations of arterial blood flow and a DPhil (PhD) in Physiology at the University of Oxford in 1975 on finite element modeling of ventricular mechanics. His major research interest has been the interrelated electrical, mechanical and biochemical functions of the heart. As the recent co-Chair of the Physiome Committee of the International Union of Physiological Sciences (IUPS) he has been helping to lead the international Physiome Project which aims to develop model and data encoding standards (CellML, FieldML, BioSignalML) and to use computational methods for understanding the integrated physiological function of the body in terms of the structure and function of tissues, cells and proteins. He is currently a Professor of Engineering Science, Director of the Bioengineering Institute at the University of Auckland and co-Director of Computational Physiology at Oxford University.
Professor Roger Kamm is the Cecil and Ida Green Distinguished Professor of Biological and Mechanical Engineering and former Associate Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. A primary objective of Kamm’s research group has been the application of fundamental concepts in fluid and solid mechanics to better understand essential biological and physiological phenomena. Spanning a wide range, research in the Kamm lab has addressed issues in the respiratory, ocular and cardiovascular systems. More recently, his attention has focused on two areas, the molecular mechanisms of cellular force sensation, and the development of new microfluidic technologies for vascularized engineered tissues. Kamm has a long-standing interest in biomechanics education, and has played key roles in developing both graduate and undergraduate bioengineering programs at MIT. He is the 2010 recipient of the Lissner Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and a member of the Institute of Medicine. He is the former chair of the US National Committee on Biomechanics and of the World Council on Biomechanics. Kamm currently directs a new NSF Science and Technology Center on Emergent Behaviors of Integrated Cellular Systems and is Chair of the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering.
Andrew F. Laine received his D.Sc. degree from Washington University (St. Louis) School of Engineering and Applied Science in Computer Science, in 1989 and BS degree from Cornell University (Ithaca, NY). He was a Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering at the University of Florida (Gainesville, FL) from 1990-1997. He joined the Department of Biomedical Engineering in 1997 and served as Vice Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University since 2003 – 2011. He is currently Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Director of the Heffner Biomedical Imaging at Columbia University and the Percy K. and Vida L. W. Hudson Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Professor of Radiology (Physics).
He was the Program Chair for the IEEE EMBS annual conference in 2006 held in New York City and
Program Chair for the EMBS annual conference for 2011 held in Boston, MA. He was the founding chair of the SPIE conference on “Mathematical Imaging: Wavelet Application in Signal and Image Processing”, and served as co-chair during the years 1993-2003. Professor Laine served on the IEEE ISBI (International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging) steering committee, 2006-2009 and presently serves as Chair. Finally, he has served as the IEEE EMBS Vice President of Publications, 2008-2012. He is a Fellow of IEEE and AIMBE. His research interests include quantitative analysis of medical and biological images, including cardiac ultrasound, MRI/Spectroscopy and SPECT/PET, health analytics and data mining of longitudinal medical records, and image informatics.
Dr. Liang received his Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University in 1989. He subsequently joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) first as a Postdoctoral Fellow (working with the late Nobel Laureate Paul Lauterbur), and then as a faculty member in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He is currently Franklin W. Woeltge Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Co-chair of the Integrative Imaging Theme of the Beckman Institute.
Dr. Liang’s research interests include biomedical imaging, especially magnetic resonance imaging. He is a recipient of the Sylvia Sorkin Greenfield Award (Medical Physics, 1990), an NSF CAREER Award (1995), the IEEE-EMBS Early Career Achievement Award (1999), and the IFMBE’s Otto Schmitt award (2012). He was named Fellow of the UIUC Center for Advanced Study (1997), Henry Magnuski Scholar (1999-2001), and University Scholar (2001-2004). Dr. Liang is a Fellow of IEEE (2006) and ISMRM (2010), and was elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 2005 and to the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering in 2012. He served as President of IEEE-EMBS from 2011-2012.
Dr. Niklason is a Professor at Yale University in Biomedical Engineering and Anesthesia, where she has been on faculty since 2006. Dr. Niklason is recognized as one of the world’s leading experts in cellular therapies and regenerative medicine. She is a leader in the development of engineered blood vessels, as well as the engineering of whole implantable tissue-engineered lungs. Dr. Niklason’s research focuses primarily on regenerative strategies for cardiovascular and lung tissues, and the impact of biomechanical and biochemical signals of tissue differentiation and development. In 2005, Dr. Niklason founded a biotechnology company (“Humacyte, Inc.”), which is working to bring engineered tissue replacements to patients. For her work in creating engineered arteries, Niklason was named one of only 19 “Innovators for the Next Century” by US News and World Report in 2001. Translation of the tissue engineered artery into a clinically applicable therapy was subsequently recognized by the Frost & Sullivan New Product Innovation Award in 2011. She was inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) in 2008. Niklason’s lab was also the first to describe the engineering of whole lung tissue that could exchange gas in vivo, and this work was cited in 2010 as one of the top 50 most important inventions of the year by Time Magazine.
Niklason received her PhD in Biophysics from the University of Chicago, and her MD from the University of Michigan. She completed her residency training in anesthesia and intensive care unit medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and completed post-doctoral scientific training at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From there she went onto a faculty position at Duke University, where she remained from 1998-2005, before moving to Yale.
P. Hunter Peckham is the Donnell Institute Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Orthopaedics; Distinguished University Professor; Executive Director, Institute for Functional Restoration at Case Western Reserve University; Senior Career Research Scientist and Associate Director of Technology Transfer, Cleveland FES Center of Excellence, in the Department of Veterans Affairs; and on the Bioscientific Staff at Metrohealth Medical Center. The major area of Dr. Peckham’s research is in rehabilitation engineering and neuroprostheses. Dr. Peckham’s research effort focuses on functional restoration of the paralyzed upper extremity in individuals with spinal cord injury. He and collaborators developed a number of implantable neural prostheses, which utilize electrical stimulation to control neuromuscular activation. They have implemented procedures to provide control upper extremity in individuals with tetraplegia, enabling individuals with central nervous system disability to regain the ability to perform essential activities of daily living. His present efforts concern technology development, expansion of the indications for this technology, and technology transfer.
Dr. Peckham is a fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, a fellow and honorary member of the American Spinal Injury Association, and member of the National Academy of Engineering. He is a member of numerous professional organizations. Dr. Peckham received the Paul B. Magnuson Award, the highest honor for VA Rehabilitation Investigators. He received his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from Clarkson College of Technology (now Clarkson University), Potsdam, NY, and his MS and PhD degrees in Biomedical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University.
Jose C. Principe (M’83-SM’90-F’00) is a Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida where he teaches advanced signal processing, machine learning and artificial neural networks (ANNs) modeling. He is BellSouth Professor and the Founder and Director of the University of Florida Computational NeuroEngineering Laboratory (CNEL) www.cnel.ufl.edu . His primary area of interest is processing of time varying signals with adaptive neural models. The CNEL Lab is studying signal and pattern recognition principles based on information theoretic criteria (entropy and mutual information) and applying these advanced algorithms to Brain Machine Interfaces (both motor as well as somatosensory feedback).
Dr. Principe is an IEEE, ABME, AIBME Fellow. He is the Past-Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, past Chair of the Technical Committee on Neural Networks of the IEEE Signal Processing Society, and Past-President of the International Neural Network Society. He received the IEEE EMBS Career Award, and the IEEE Neural Network Pioneer Award. He has Honorary Doctor Degrees from the U. of Reggio Calabria Italy, S. Luis Maranhao Brazil and Aalto U. in Finland. Currently he is the Editor in Chief of the IEEE Reviews in Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Principe has more than 600 publications. He directed 73 Ph.D. dissertations and 65 Master theses. He wrote four books: an interactive electronic book entitled “Neural and Adaptive Systems: Fundamentals through Simulation” (Wiley), “Brain Machine Interface Engineering”, Kernel Adaptive Filtering (Wiley), and Information Theoretic Learning (Springer).
Nitish V. Thakor has been appointed as the Provost Professor, National University of Singapore, and he now leads the SiNAPSE Institute, focused on neurotechnology research and development. He is also a Professor of Biomedical Engineering. Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Neurology at Johns Hopkins and directs the Laboratory for Neuroengineering. Dr. Thakor’s technical expertise is in the areas of neural diagnostic instrumentation, neural microsystem, neural signal processing, optical imaging of the nervous system, rehabilitation, neural control of prosthesis and brain machine interface. He is the Director of a Neuroengineering Training program funded by the National Institute of Health. He has published 230 refereed journal papers, generated 11 patents, co-founded four companies, and carries out research funded mainly by the NIH, NSF and DARPA. He was the Editor in Chief of IEEE Transactions on Neural and Rehabilitation Engineering (2005-2011). Dr. Thakor is a recipient of a Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health and a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation, and is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, IEEE and Founding Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society, Technical Achievement Award from IEEE and Distinguished Alumnus award from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Max A. Viergever received the MSc degree in applied mathematics in 1972 and the DSc degree with a thesis on cochlear mechanics in 1980, both from Delft University of Technology. From 1972 to 1988 he was Assistant/Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics at this university.
Since 1988 he has been Professor and Head of the Department of Medical Imaging at Utrecht University, since 1989 Professor of Physics and since 1996 Professor of Computer Science at the same university. He is founder and director of the Image Sciences Institute of the University Medical Center Utrecht, of the PhD program Medical Imaging (ImagO), and of the MSc program Biomedical Image Sciences.
He is (co)author of more than 600 refereed scientific articles on biophysics and medical imaging, guest editor of nine journal issues, (co)author/editor of 18 books, and has served as supervisor of 125 PhD theses and >150 MSc theses. His research interests comprise all aspects of medical imaging.
Max Viergever is Honorary Senator of the University of Ljubljana, Honorary Member of the Dutch Society for Pattern Recognition and Image Processing, recipient of the Catharijne Award, of the IEEE EMBS Distinguished Service Award and of the IEEE EMBS Academic Career Achievement Award, and Elected Fellow of IAPR, IEEE, IOP, and MICCAI.
He is (co)author of >15 awarded journal articles and conference presentations, and has received three citation awards. He has been editor of the Springer book series Computational Imaging and Vision, editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, editor of the Journal of Mathematical Imaging and Vision, and has served on the editorial board of fourteen more international journals.
Bruce Wheeler is Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida. He served as Acting Department Chair from Jan 2009-Dec 2012, co-creating the BS BME degree program. Previously he was at the University of Illinois (1980-2008), creating the BS, MS, PHD and Department of Bioengineering, serving as Founding and Interim Head from Jan 2004 to Jan 2008. He was also a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the Beckman Institute, and a former chair of the Neuroscience Program. He also served as Associate Head of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.
He has served as Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering from 2006-2012 and becomes President of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society in January 2013.
Prof. Wheeler’s research interests lie in the application of electrical engineering methodologies to neuroscience. His work influenced neural spike sorting, microelectrode array recording from brain, and the development of lithography to control cells, especially neurons, in culture. This work aims at basic science understanding of the behavior of small populations of neurons, in hopes of creating better insight into the functioning of the brain.
Professor Guang-Zhong Yang, PhD (FREng, FIEEE, FIET, FAIMBE) is director and co-founder of the Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery, Deputy Chairman of the Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London, UK. Professor Yang also holds a number of key academic positions at Imperial – he is Director and Founder of the Royal Society/Wolfson Medical Image Computing Laboratory, co-founder of the Wolfson Surgical Technology Laboratory, Chairman of the Centre for Pervasive Sensing.
Professor Yang’s main research interests are in medical imaging, sensing and robotics. In imaging, he is credited for a number of novel MR phase contrast velocity imaging and computational modelling techniques that have transformed in vivo blood flow quantification and visualization. These include the development of locally focused imaging combined with real-time navigator echoes for resolving respiratory motion for high-resolution coronary-angiography, as well as MR dynamic flow pressure mapping for which he received the ISMRM I. I Rabi Award. He pioneered the concept of perceptual docking for robotic control, which represents a paradigm shift of learning and knowledge acquisition of motor and perceptual/cognitive behaviour for robotics, as well as the field of Body Sensor Network (BSN) for providing personalized wireless monitoring platforms that are pervasive, intelligent, and context-aware. Professor Yang is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, fellow of IEEE, IET, AIMBE and a recipient of the Royal Society Research Merit Award and The Times Eureka ‘Top 100’ in British Science.