Home - Plenary Speakers
Dominique M. Durand is E.L. Linsedth Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Neurosciences and Director of the Neural Engineering Center at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He received an engineering degree from Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Electronique, Hydrolique, Informatique et Automatique de Toulouse, France in 1973. In 1974, he received a M.S. degree in Biomedical Engineering from Case Reserve University in Cleveland OH., worked several years at the Addiction Research Foundation of Toronto, Canada and in 1982 received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering. He received an NSF Young Investigator Presidential Award as well as the Diekhoff and Wittke awards for graduate and undergraduate teaching and the Mortar board top-prof awards at Case Western Reserve University. He is an IEEE Fellow and also Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biomedical Engineering and Fellow of the Institute of Physics. He serves on many editorial boards of peer-reviewed scientific journals. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Neural Engineering and served as editor-in-chief for 18 years. His research interests are in neural engineering and include computational neuroscience, neurophysiology and control of epilepsy, non-linear dynamics of neural systems, neural prostheses and applied magnetic and electrical field interactions with neural tissue. He has obtained funding for his research from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and private foundations. He has published over 160 peer-reviewed articles and he has consulted for many biotechnology companies and foundations.
Tony Cass is Emeritus Professor of Analytical Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London where his research is focussed on point of need and continuous sensing for human, animal, plant and environmental health. Tony graduated in Chemistry from the University of York and has a DPhil from the University of Oxford where he was a Hastings Senior Scholar at the Queen’s College. He joined Imperial College London after post-doctoral research and a BP Junior Research Fellowship in Enzymology at St Hugh’s College Oxford. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Royal Society of Biology Tony has held visiting Chairs at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Wuhan Institute of Virology), Universiti Teknologi, Malaysia, the University of Rome La Sapienza and most recently at the University of Bari, Italy. Tony’s research has a strongly translational flavour and he is co-founder of BioNano Consulting Ltd, and AquAffirm Ltd, as well as acting as a consultant for a range of technology companies, from start-ups to major internationals. His work has been recognised through the award of the Royal Society’s Mullard medal, a Royal Society of Chemistry Chemical Landmark award (‘Blue Plaque’) and the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Sir George Stokes Award.
Jaebum Choo is a Distinguished Professor and Vice-President for Research at Chung-Ang University in South Korea. He obtained his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in 1994. In 2015, he was appointed as a Baik Nam Distinguished Professor, in recognition of his outstanding academic accomplishments. In 2016, he served as the President of the Korea Biochip Society, and in 2020, he was the Chair of the Analytical Chemistry Division of the Korean Chemical Society. Throughout his career, Professor Choo has delivered over 150 invited lectures in the USA, Europe, and Asia. He has published more than 300 research papers in peer-reviewed journals, which have received over 21,000 citations. He has also co-authored eight book chapters and holds 40 patents. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and serves as the Associate Editor of "Analyst" and on the advisory board of "ACS Sensors." Currently, Professor Choo serves as the Director of the "Center for Nanophotonics-based Biomedical Diagnostics Research Center (ERC)," which is supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea. His primary research areas include nanoplasmonics, biosensors, microdevices, and molecular spectroscopy. His ongoing research programs focus on the development of highly sensitive optical nano-sensor systems for rapid and precise in vitro diagnostics of infectious diseases.
Bin He is a Trustee Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Professor by courtesy of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Professor of Neuroscience Institute, and director of NIH Neural Interfacing Training Program at Carnegie Mellon University. Before moving to Carnegie Mellon, Dr. He was Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Bakken-Medtronic Endowed Chair for Engineering in Medicine at the University of Minnesota. He’s current research interests are in the field of neuroengineering and biomedical imaging, include brain-computer interface, electrophysiological neuroimaging, and neuromodulation. He has published over 300 peer-reviewed journal articles, and given over 200 plenary, keynote, and invited talks at a number of national and international conferences and institutions. Dr. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE), IEEE, the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES). His research has been recognized by major awards including the IEEE Biomedical Engineering Award, IEEE EMBS William J. Morlock Award, the IEEE EMBS Academic Career Achievement Award, and American Heart Association Established Investigator Award. Dr. He was appointed as a Member of NIH BRAIN Initiative Multi-Council Working Group and of National Advisory Council for Complementary and Integrative Health. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Reviews in Biomedical Engineering, the former Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, and the editor of textbook entitled “Neural Engineering” (1st 2005; 2nd edition 2013; 3rd edition 2020). Dr. He served as a Past President of IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) and is the immediate Past Chair of International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering.
Ki H. Chon is currently the John and Donna Krenicki Endowed Chair Professor of Biomedical Engineering at University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT. His current research interests include medical instrumentation, biomedical signal processing, wearable sensors and devices including use of smart phones for vital signs and monitoring cardiac arrhythmias, development of hydrophobic vital sign sensors and identification and modeling of physiological systems. His patent concerning an algorithm for real-time detection of atrial fibrillation has been licensed to a Holter company and the Holter monitor is currently on the market. He was an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering from 2007-2013. He has chaired many international conferences including his role as the Program Co-Chair for the IEEE EMBS conference in NYC in 2006, and as the Conference Chair for the 6th International Workshop on Biosignal Interpretation in New Haven, CT in 2009. He is fellow of IEEE, National Academy of Inventors, International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering, American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, and Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association.
Professor Yuan-Ting Zhang is currently the Chairman/ Founder of Hong Kong Institutes of Medical Engineering (KIME), the Chief Scientist at the Honor Mobile Terminal LtD, Adjunct Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a MWLC-LRG member of Karolinska Institutet. He was the funding Chairman and first Director of Hong Kong Center for Cerebrocardiovascular Health Engineering. He was the Sensing System Architect in Health Technology and Sensing Hardware Divisions at Apple Inc., California, USA, the founding Director of the Key Lab for Health Informatics of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the founding Director of CAS-SIAT Institute of Biomedical and Health Engineering. Professor Zhang dedicated his service to the Chinese University of Hong Kong from 1994 to 2015, where he served as the first Head of the Division of Biomedical Engineering and led the efforts on establishing three Programmes including Bachelor, Master and PhD degrees in Biomedical Engineering. Prof. Zhang has been the Chair of the IEEE 1708 Standard Working Group for developing an international standard on Wearable Cuffless BP Measuring Devices since 2007 and become recently a member of European Society of Hypertension Working Group on Blood Pressure Monitoring and Cardiovascular Variability. He is appointed as Editor-in-Chief for Connected Health and Telemedicine (CHATmed) in 2023. He was the Editor-in-Chief for IEEE T-ITB, the founding Editor-in-Chief of IEEE J-BHI, and the EiC for IEEE R-BME. He served as Vice President of IEEE EMBS. He was also the Chair of 2016-2018 IEEE Award Committee in Biomedical Engineering, a member of IEEE Medal Panel for Healthcare Technology Award, and the main organizer for 20 editions of IEEE EMBS Summer School and Symposium on Medical Devices and Biosensors since 2002. Professor Zhang served as Technical Program Chair of EMBC’98 in Hong Kong, Conference Chair of EMBC’05 in Shanghai, International Committee Co-Chair of EMBC’07 in Lyon, International Committee Chair of EMBC’ 11 in Boston, International Committee Chair of EMBC’13 in Osaka, and Technical Program Committee Co-Chair of EMBC’17 in Jeju Island. He was invited to give numerous talks at various international conferences worldwide including those at the First IEEE Life Sciences Grand Challenges Conference held at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC in 2012, at the 40th IEEE-EMBS Annual International Conference (EMBC’18) in Hawaii in 2018, Earl Owen Lecture at SMIT-IBEC2018 inKorea, and at the 2019 Conference on Wearable Devices for Medical Diagnosis held at IIT in Israel. Prof. Zhang's research interests include unobtrusive biosensing, wearable and soft medical devices, Tonoarteriography/cBP, and neural physiological modeling. He was selected on the lists of China’s Most Cited Researchers by Elsevier, the top 2% researcher worldwide by Stanford University, and ranked No. 1 researcher in cuffless BP technology during the last 30 years from 1990 to 2020. He won a number of national and international awards including IEEE-EMBS best journal paper awards, IEEE-EMBS Outstanding Service Award, IEEE-SA 2014 Emerging Technology Award, IEEE-EMBS Chapter Award in Greece, Asia-Pacific E-Medicine Technology Grand Award in Australia, Earl Owen Lecture at SMIT-IBEC2018 in Korea, and most recently he won the 2023 IEEE EMBS William J. Award. Prof. Zhang is elected as IAMBE Fellow, IEEE Fellow, AIMBE Fellow and AAIA Fellow for his contributions to the development of wearable and m-Health technologies. Processor Zhang completed his undergraduate studies and master degree in the area of telecommunications at Shandong University and PhD in electrical and computer engineering with specialization in biomedical engineering at University of New Brunswick, Canada.
Dr. Saleem Iqbal is an award recipient for Structural Virology-SARS-CoV-2 project, currently working as Senior Postdoctoral fellow at Dept. of Molecular medicine Chu de Quebec hospital, Canada. His current work focusses on SARS-CoV-2 drug discovery therapeutics. As a Neuroscientist, Biophysicist, Crystallographer and structural bioinformatician, he uses his expertise in protein folding, System Biology, Molecular modelling, Ligand design, SAR, Molecular dynamics simulation to understand and study important human diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s disease, COVID-19 therapeutics and Cancer at different interfaces. He has been Visiting Professor at the School of Pharmaceutical Education and Research at Jamia Hamdard University and School of Biotechnology at Bennett University. He earned his Ph.D., in Bioinformatics-Crystallography and Biophysics-Interdisciplinary from prestigious Biophysics Department-home of Ramachandran plot to understand the structure of short chains of amino acids at University of Madras. He worked as Research Associate for Prostate Cancer therapeutics at Bioinformatics Lab funded by Department of Biotechnology, India. He also worked as Senior Research Associate at Prestigious Department of Computational and Data Sciences (CDS), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore., where his publication on secretase biology "Discovery of microRNAs as biomarkers targeting the delta secretases" is a key finding in Alzheimer’s Disease. He is recipient of various travel awards. Dr. Saleem Iqbal major projects have been funded by Alzheimer’s Association, EMBO and CIHR.
Dr. Xinguang Cui is an associate professor in the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China. He is the lead of the Lab of respiratory multiphase flows. He received a bachelor degree in Beihang University, China at 2005, master degree in Tsinghua University, China at 2008 respectively. At 2012, he received his Ph.D degree in the subject of fluid mechanics from University of Heidelberg, Germany at 2012. He conducted research work related to numerical modeling the areas of fluid mechanics, atmosphere science and bio-energy in University of Heidelberg, Nanyang Technological University and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Presently, he is interested in applying in numerical methods to solve industrial and scientific problems in the disciplines of medical industry, indoor environment and energy, specially related to respiratory multiphase flows. Until now, he has published more than 40 peer-reviewed journal paper, and more than 20 conference papers.
Dr. Larry Unsworth is a full professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Alberta, Canada. His lab has interests in molecular self-assembly, with a special focus on engineered peptides for biomaterial applications. He received his Ph.D. degree in blood-material interfaces in early 2005. Then worked with the National Research Council of Canada – National Institute for Nanotechnology (NRC-NINT) and Massachusetts Institute for Technology, doing a Research Associateship with Dr. Zhang who is world leader for self-assembling peptides for biomedical applications. Currently a Full Professor, he has published ~100 papers, supervised ~150 trainees, and received support from all major national and provincial funders.