Organizing Committee
Chairs
Metin Akay
University of Houston
Metin Akay received his B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey in 1981 and 1984, respectively, and a Ph.D. degree from Rutgers University in 1990. He also received an honorary Ph.D. from the Aalborg University in 2015. He 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 currently the President-Elect of IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.
He has played a key role in promoting biomedical education in the world by writing and editing several books, editing several special issues of prestigious journals, including the Proc of IEEE, and giving several keynotes and plenary talks at international conferences, symposiums, and workshops regarding emerging technologies in biomedical engineering. 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 is also the editor of the Neural Engineering Handbook published by Wiley/IEEE Press and the first steering committee chair of the IEEE Trans on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics.
Shankar Subramaniam
University of California San Diego
Shankar Subramaniam is a Distinguished Professor of Bioengineering, Computer Science and Engineering, Cellular and Molecular Medicine, and Nanoengineering. He is currently the President of IEEE EMBS. He was the Chair of the Bioengineering Department at the University of California at San Diego (2008-13) leading the Department to be ranked first in NRC rankings. He holds the inaugural Joan and Irwin Jacobs Endowed Chair in Bioengineering and Systems Biology. He was the Founding Director of the Bioinformatics Graduate Program at the University of California at San Diego. He is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and International Federation of Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE). Subramaniam is a recipient of the Smithsonian Foundation and Association of Laboratory Automation Awards and his research spans systems biology and medicine. In 2002, he received the Genome Technology All-Star Award. In 2011, he was appointed as a Distinguished Scientist at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. In 2019 he was awarded the of IIT Kanpur Jubilee Year Distinguished Alumni Award. Subramaniam is a pioneer in Systems Biology research. He has published in leading journals such as Nature, Cell, Science family, and in 2008, he was awarded the Faculty Excellence in Research Award at UCSD. His work at the interface of engineering and medicine has impacted several research areas in biomedicine. He has served on several national research advisory councils including the National Institutes of Health.
Program Chairs
Poalo Bonato
Harvard University
Paolo Bonato, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School. He holds adjunct appointments at the MGH Institute of Health Professions, the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, and Boston University College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences. He has held Adjunct Faculty positions at MIT, the University of Ireland Galway, and the University of Melbourne. His research work is focused on the development of rehabilitation technologies with special emphasis on wearable technology and robotics. Dr. Bonato currently serves as the Founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Open Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology. He served as IEEE EMBS Vice President for Publications (2013-2016). He received an M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy in 1989 and a Ph.D. degree in biomedical engineering from Universita` di Roma “La Sapienza” in 1995.
Colin Brenan
1CellBio Inc.
Colin J.H. Brenan is a serial life science entrepreneur and senior executive with over 30 years of experience in scientific research, project management, product development, strategic marketing, and financing of early-stage life science companies. Dr. Brenan is currently a Founder/Chief Commercial Officer of antibody-drug developer HiFiBiO Ltd (www.hifibio.com) and Founder/CEO of the single-cell instrumentation company 1CellBio Inc. (www.1cell-bio.com). Formerly he was Managing Director of the Monsanto-Atlas Seed Fund Alliance at Atlas Venture (Cambridge, USA) where he identified and invested in seed and early-stage life science companies. Prior to Atlas, Dr. Brenan was Director of Strategic Relationships for the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (Boston, MA).
Previous to joining CIMIT, Dr. Brenan was the Founder, Chief Technology Officer, and Senior Vice President, Business Development for BioTrove Inc. (Woburn, USA), a life science tools and consumables company spun-out from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and acquired by Life Technologies Inc. (LIFE:NASDAQ); and a Founder of Biocius Inc., a drug development instrument and service provider spun-out from BioTrove and acquired by Agilent Inc. (A:NYSE).
Dr. Brenan is the inventor of 30 US patents, +60 patent applications, and published +50 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and reports in the fields of bio-microsystems, confocal microscopy, spectroscopic imaging, and microsurgical robotics. He has over a decade of experience in consulting for the US National Institutes of Health and is a reviewer for IEEE, IEE, and AIP journals. Dr. Brenan is a Senior Member of the IEEE-EMBS and former Editor-in-Chief of IEEE PULSE Magazine. He received his B.Sc. (Honors Physics), M. Eng. (Electrical), and Ph.D. (Biomedical Engineering) from McGill University (Montreal, Canada) and completed post-doctoral training at MIT (Cambridge, USA).
International Program Advisors
Dimitrios I. Fotiadis
University of Ioannina
Dimitris I. Fotiadis (Fellow, IEEE) was born in Ioannina, Greece in 1961. He received the Diploma degree from the National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece, in 1985, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA, in 1990, respectively, all in chemical engineering. He is currently a Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece, where he is also the Director of the Unit of Medical Technology and Intelligent Information Systems and is also an Affiliated Member of the Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas, Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Department of Biomedical Research.
Dr. Emil Jovanov
The University of Alabama in Huntsville
Dimitris I. Fotiadis (Fellow, IEEE) was born in Ioannina, Greece in 1961. He received the Diploma degree from the National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece, in 1985, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA, in 1990, respectively, all in chemical engineering. He is currently a Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece, where he is also the Director of the Unit of Medical Technology and Intelligent Information Systems and is also an Affiliated Member of the Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas, Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Department of Biomedical Research.
Wei Chen
School of Information Science and Technology, FUDAN
Prof. Wei Chen received her B. Eng. degree in 1999 and M. Eng. degree in 2002 in telecommunication systems and smart sensor systems, from the School of Electrics and Information Engineering, Xian Jiaotong University, China. She obtained her Ph.D. degree in 2007 on performance monitoring and impairment mitigation for optical communication systems, from the Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Australia. She worked at Bell Laboratories Germany, Alcatel-Lucent, Stuttgart, Germany as an intern in 2005. From 2007 to 2015, she was an Assistant Professor at Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. Since Oct. 2015, she has been a full professor and director of the Center for Intelligent Medical Electronics (CIME) at the Department of Electronic Engineering, School of Information Science and Technology, Fudan University. She is a Senior Member of IEEE and associate editor of the IEEE Journal on Biomedical Health Informatics (J-BHI).
Publicity and Social Media Promotion Team
Michael Markowycz
Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society
Khanita Duangchaemkarn, Pharm.D
University of Phayao, Thailand
Hans van Oostrom, Ph.D
van Oostrom Consulting
Charlotte Mae K. Waits, Ph.D.
University of Houston
Ting Chen, Ph.D.
University of Houston
Nick Plosko
University of Houston