Prof. Tan Chohr Chuan
Deputy Chairman, A*STAR
President, National University of Singapore

Professor Tan Chorh Chuan was appointed President of the National University of Singapore in Dec 2008. He is concurrently the Deputy Chairman of A*STAR.

A renal physician, he obtained his medical training at NUS, and research training at the Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford. He was Dean of the NUS Faculty of Medicine from 1997 to 2000. He served as the Director of Medical Services, Ministry of Health, from 2000 to 2004, in which capacity he was responsible for leading the public health response to the 2003 SARS epidemic. He held the positions of NUS Provost, then Senior Deputy President from 2004-2008. As Deputy Chairman of the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Governing Board from 2004-2007, he played a key role in setting up the partnership. As the inaugural Chief Executive of the National University Health System in 2008, he brought the NUS Medical and Dental Schools and the National University Hospital under a single governance.

Professor Tan received the Public Service Star in 2003 for outstanding contributions to overcoming SARS in Singapore, and the Public Administration Gold Medal in 2004 for his work in the Ministry of Health. He is a key leader in Singapore’s Biomedical Sciences Initiative since its inception in 2000, for which he was awarded the National Science and Technology Medal in 2008. Other awards include the Albert Schweitzer Gold Medal from the Polish Academy of Medicine and the 1996 Singapore Youth Award.

Professor Tan was previously a Commonwealth Medical Fellow, Wellcome Fellow, University of Oxford, and a Visiting Scholar to Wolfson College, Oxford. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Royal College of Physicians of London, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, the American College of Physicians, elected Fellow of the Polish Academy of Medicine and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, UK.


 

 Ms Yong Ying-I
Permanent Secretary, Public Service Division
Permanent Secretary, National Research and Development, Prime Minister’s Office

Ms Yong assumed the position of Permanent Secretary of the Public Service Division of the Prime Minister’s Office in April 2012. She is concurrently Permanent Secretary of the National Research Foundation, also a department under the Prime Minister’s Office. She has held this portfolio since Oct 2011.

The Public Service Division of the Prime Minister’s Office leads agencies across the Government in personnel matters. As the Singapore Government’s chief human resource officer, her role focusing on building a first class Public Service for a successful and vibrant Singapore. Concurrent with her role as Permanent Secretary (Public Service), Ms Yong is Chairman of the Civil Service College, the corporate college for training and developing officers across the public service. Ms Yong is also Chairman of the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) and its subsidiary, IDA-International. Concurrently, she serves on the Board of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.

In her civil service career, Ms Yong has served in the Ministries of Finance, Trade & Industry, Home Affairs, Communications & IT, Manpower (as it’s Permanent Secretary and Founding Chairman of the Workforce Development Agency), and was Principal Private Secretary to then-Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. In her immediate previous assignment as Permanent Secretary (Health), she guided the development of Singapore’s health services to provide quality affordable healthcare to Singaporeans and build new peaks of excellence in medical treatments, education and biomedical research. Ms Yong graduated with first class honours in Economics from University of Cambridge and holds a Masters in Business Administration from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Business Administration.


 

George_RaddaProfessor Sir George Radda
Chairman, Biomedical Research Council (BMRC)
Emeritus Professor of Molecular Cardiology, University of Oxford

Professor Sir George Karoly Radda was peviously Professor and Head of the Department of Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics, University of Oxford (2006-2008) and subsequently returned to his positions as Emeritus Professor in the University and Emeritus Fellow of Merton College. He joined as the Scientific Director and Chairman of the Singapore Bioimaging Consortium. He serves as the Director, Functional Metabolism Research Group (Dec 2010 -) and Chairman Biomedical Research Council of A*-STAR, Singapore (2008 -)

His research interests range from studies of enzyme regulation, bioenergetics and in vivo biochemistry in relation to human disease and in particular heart disease. In 1974 he published the first paper on the use of phosphorus NMR to study tissue metabolites. The first report of a clinical application of 31P NMR was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1981, when his group studied a patient’s muscle metabolism in the rare condition of phosphorylase deficiency (McArdle’s syndrome).These developments led to the setting up of the first clinical magnetic resonance spectroscopy unit in the world and to his appointment to the newly established British Heart Foundation Chair in Molecular Cardiology at Oxford. He was awarded the CBE in 1993 and Knighted in 2000. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1980. He has been awarded to following prizes – The Colworth Medal of the Biochemical Society (1969), Feldberg Foundation prize (1981), British Heart Foundation Gold Medal and Prize for Cardiovascular Research (1982), CIBA Medal and Prize Biochemical Society (1983), Gold Medal Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (1984), Buchanan Medal Royal Society (1987), Walter B. Cannon Memorial Lecture Award, American Physiological Society (1988), Skinner Lecture Medal Royal College of Radiologists (1989), Rank Prize in Nutrition (1991), Medal of Merit, International Academy of Cardiovascular Sciences (2006). Budapest Semmeilweis Awards, 2011. BioSpectrum Asia-Pacific Life Time Achievement Award, 2013.


 

 Barry Halliwell, Ph.D.
Deputy President (Research & Technology)
Tan Chin Tuan Centennial Professor, Department of Biochemistry,
Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS)

Professor Halliwell is Deputy President (Research & Technology) and Tan Chin Tuan Centennial Professor of Biochemistry at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

He graduated from the University of Oxford with BA (1st class) and D.Phil degrees and holds a D.Sc degree from the University of London.

An internationally-acclaimed biochemist, Professor Halliwell is known especially for his seminal work on the role of free radicals and antioxidants in biological systems. The Thomson Reuters lists Professor Halliwell as one of the world’s most highly-cited researchers in Biology and Biochemistry, Pharmacology and Toxicology and Neurobiology and his Hirsch Index is 139.

His book Free Radicals in Biology and Medicine published by Oxford University Press, and now in its fourth edition, is regarded worldwide as the authoritative text in the field. He was recently awarded the “Lifetime Achievement Award” by the Society for Free Radical Biology and Medicine in the USA for overall sustained excellence in the field. His laboratory is also ranked number 1 worldwide by highest citation score in Free Radical Research. He was recently awarded the President’s Science and Technology Medal 2013 “for distinguished sustained and exceptional contributions to Singapore’s Science and Engineering landscape” and he received the Public Administration Medal (Silver) in 2010 by the President of Singapore for contributions to Singapore.

His research focuses on the role of free radicals and antioxidants in ageing and human disease, particularly Alzheimer’s disease and other brain disorders. His interest in identifying the most important antioxidants in the human diet and in developing novel antioxidants has critical bearing on treating human diseases and understanding how diet might cause or prevent them.

 

 Alan Finkel, Ph.D.
Chancellor, Monash University
President, Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering
Monash University, Victoria, Australia.

Dr. Alan Finkel is Chancellor of Monash University, Australia’s largest university, and President of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, an organization dedicated to the strategic application of technology for social, environmental and economic benefit. Alan is Executive Publisher of Cosmos Magazine, an Australian literary science magazine with a global following. He is the chairman of the Australian Centre of Excellence for All-Sky Astrophysics and the CEO of Stile Education, a provider of an intuitive web application for on-line interactive learning. For three years until 2012 Alan was Chief Technology Officer of Better Place Australia, a company dedicated to the provision of low-emissions electricity to operate electric vehicles. Previously, for nearly twenty-five years, Alan was the CEO of Axon Instruments, a California-based company that made precision scientific instruments used at pharmaceutical companies and universities for the discovery of new medicines. Alan was personally responsible for the design or leading the design of many instruments used for measuring electrical activity in individual brain cells and for fluorescence imaging of cells and DNA microarrays. He is the inventor of a device known as the population patch clamp used for safety and efficacy testing of pharmaceutical candidates. Alan is passionate about educating the next generation. He established the Australian Course in Advanced Neuroscience to provide specialized training from global experts to early-career scientists and he established and leads a secondary school science program named STELR that is currently running in over 350 secondary schools around Australia.


 

Paolo_DarioPaolo Dario, Ph.D.
Professor of Biomedical Robotics
Director of The BioRobotics Institute of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA), Pisa, Italy

Paolo Dario is Professor of Biomedical Robotics and Director of The BioRobotics Institute of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA), Pisa, Italy. He is the Coordinator of the PhD Program in BioRobotics at SSSA, enrolling 85 PhD students. He has been Founding Coordinator of the Center of Micro-BioRobotics@SSSA of the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), and he is currently Senior Scientist of IIT. His main research interests are in the fields of medical robotics, bio-robotics, bio-mechatronics and micro/nano engineering and robotics. He is the coordinator of many national and European projects, the editor of two books on the subject of robotics, and the author of more than 500 scientific papers (300+ on ISI journals). His H-index (ISI Web of Science) is 48 (so he is in the list of Top Italian Scientists). Prof. Dario has been and is Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editor and member of the Editorial Board of many international journals. Prof. Dario has served as President of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society in the years. 2002-2003, and as Chair of many Technical Committees of the same Society. Prof. Dario is an IEEE Fellow, a Fellow of the European Society on Medical and Biological Engineering, and a recipient of many honors and awards, such as the Joseph Engelberger Award for Pioneer Research in Biomedical Robotics. He is also a member of the Board of the International Foundation of Robotics Research (IFRR) and a Fellow of the School of Engineering, University of Tokyo). Prof. Dario has been recently elected in the Board of Directors of the euRobotics AISBL, the entity promoting the creation of a Public Private Partnership in Robotics in Europe. He has promoted the creation of more than 20 start-up companies active in the market of biomedical devices and services, and he is/has been a partner of 5 of these start-up companies.


 

sunil agrawalSunil K. Agrawal, Ph.D.
Professor, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering
Director, ROAR and ROSE Laboratories
Columbia University, New York

Sunil K. Agrawal received a Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University in 1990. He currently holds appointments in School of Engineering and School of Medicine at Columbia University. He is the Director of Robotics And Rehabilitation (ROAR) Laboratory and Robotic Systems Engineering Laboratory (ROSE). He has published close to 350 journal and conference papers. Dr. Agrawal is a Fellow of the ASME and his honors include a NSF Presidential Faculty Fellowship from the White House in 1994, a Bessel Prize from Germany in 2003, a Humboldt US Senior Scientist Award in 2007, Best Paper award at the 35th ASME Robotics and Mechanisms Conference in 2011, and Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference in Robotics and Automation in 2012. He currently also holds the positions of a distinguished visiting professor at Hanyang University in Korea and a Professor of Robotics at University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. He has served on editorial boards of several journals published by ASME and IEEE.


 

 Shuming Nie, Ph.D.
Wallace H. Coulter Distinguished Chair Professor in Biomedical Engineering
Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology,Atlanta,Georgia, USA

Dr. Shuming Nie’s research is in the areas of molecular engineering and nanotechnology, with a focus on bioconjugated nanoparticles for cancer molecular imaging, molecular profiling, and targeted therapy. His major academic achievements include the discovery of colloidal metal nanoparticles that are able to amplify the efficiencies of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) by 14-15 orders of magnitude, his pioneering work on water-soluble semiconductor quantum dots, and his breakthrough work in developing multifunctional smart nanoparticles for integrated biomedical imaging and therapy, including image-guided cancer surgery. Professor Nie has published over 290 papers, patents, and book chapters, and his scholarly work has been cited more than 35,000 times. He has received many awards and honors including a Special Achievement Award in Nanomedicine from Nature (2012), Fellow of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2012), “Deal of the Year” Award in Technology Licensing (Emory University, 2012), the NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award (2011), “Innovation of the Year” Award (Emory University, 2010), the “MilliPub” Award (for 4 publications with more than 1000 citations each) (2010), the Merck Award in Analytical Chemistry (2007), the Georgia Cancer Coalition (GCC) Special Achievement Award (2007), Elected Fellow of the American Institute of Biological and Medical Engineering (2006), the Cheung Kong Professorship (The Ministry of Education of China, 2006), the Rank Prize in Opto-electronics (London, UK, 2005), the Georgia Distinguished Cancer Scholar Award (Georgia Cancer Coalition, 2002-2007), the Beckman Young Investigator Award, the National Collegiate Inventors Award, and the NSFC Overseas Young Scholar Award.


 

 Jing Cheng Ph.D.
Expert in medical biophysics
Cheung Kong Professor, Medical Systems Biology Research Center and Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University
Director, National Engineering Research Center for Beijing Biochip Technology
Member, Chinese Academy of Engineering and National “Thousand Talents” Distinguished Professor

Dr. Cheng received his Ph.D. degree in Forensic Sciences from the University of Strathclyde (UK) in 1992. He has been engaged and made great achievements in biotechnology researches related to the basic and clinical medicine, especially in the field of biochip technology. He has established series of biochip-based molecular typing systems for disease prevention, diagnosis and prognosis; and developed a variety of biochips for the analysis of genes, proteins and cells. Some of the chips have been certified by the State food and Drug Administration and applied in the hospital. Additionally, he has been responsible in develop and manufacture a full line of instruments for biochips.
Dr. Cheng has published 117 peer-reviewed papers and edited 8 books. In addition, he has obtained 42 European and US patents. He was awarded Second Prize of the National Awards for Technological Innovation in 2007 etc.


 

 Bruce C. Wheeler, Ph.D.
Professor of Biomedical Engineering, BME Dept., University of Florida
President, IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society

Prof. Wheeler’s research interests lie in the application of electrical engineering methodologies to neuroscience. His work influenced the development of neural spike sorting technologies, demonstrated that microelectrode array recording from brain slices was possible and productive, and has been a leader in 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.

Bruce Wheeler moved to the University of Florida in 2008, after 28 years at the University of Illinois, mostly in the ECE Dept. He founded the Bioengineering Department at Illinois and served as acting department chair at both Illinois and Florida.

He currently serves as President of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, the world’s largest bioengineering society, and was Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, AIMBE and BMES.


 

 Guan Cuntai, Ph.D.
Principal Scientist and Department Head at the Institute for Infocomm Research, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore

Dr. Cuntai Guan is currently the Principal Scientist and Department Head at the Institute for Infocomm Research, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore. He is the A*STAR Programme Leader of Neuro-Technology. He received his PhD degree in electrical and electronic engineering from Southeast University in 1993. His career began with research and development on speech recognition, text-to-speech, and spoken dialogue technologies. He was a lecturer, visiting scientist and researcher at Southeast University, CRIN/CNRS–INRIA, City University of Hong Kong, and Kent Ridge Digital Laboratories, from 1994-1998. He then spent 5 years in industry (Lernout & Hauspie, InfoTalk Technology), as a Research Manager and the R&D Director. Since 2003, he founded and directed the Brain-computer Interface (BCI) Laboratory at the Institute for Infocomm Research. From 2007 to 2012, he founded and directed two research programs on medical and healthcare technology at the Institute for Infocomm Research. Since 2012, he founded and directed a research department, Neural & Biomedical Technology Department at the Institute for Infocomm Research, focusing on brain-computer interfaces, neural and biomedical signal processing and sensing, neural and biomedical image processing, etc.

His research interests include neural and biomedical signal processing, machine learning and pattern recognition, neural and cognitive process and its clinical applications, brain–computer interface algorithms, systems and applications, statistical signal processing, neural image processing, medical system and device research and development. He is the recipient of Annual BCI Research Award 2010, IES Prestigious Engineering Achievement Award 2009, Achiever of the Year (Research) Award 2011. He published over 200 refereed journal and conference papers and holds 14 granted patents and applications. He licensed 7 patents to US and Singapore based companies. He secured over 
$9.8M research grant as principal investigator and co-investigator in the past 5 years. He delivered over 40 keynote speech and invited talks. He is on Editorial Board of IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, IEEE Access (life sciences and biomedical engineering), Australasian Medical Journal, Frontiers in Neuroprosthetics, and A*STAR Research Publication.


 

 Jack Gallant, Ph.D.
Professor, Psychology and Neuroscience
Programs in Bioengineering, Biophysics & Vision Science
University of California, Berkeley, USA

Jack Gallant is Professor of Psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, and is affiliated with the graduate programs in Bioengineering, Biophysics, Neuroscience and Vision Science. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University and did post-doctoral work at the California Institute of Technology and Washington University Medical School. His research program focuses on quantitative computational modeling of the human brain. These models accurately describe how the brain encodes information during natural tasks, and they can be used to decode information in the brain in order to reconstruct mental experiences. This computational framework can be used to understand and decode brain activity measured by different methods (e.g., functional MRI, NIRS, EEG or ECOG), and in different modalities (i.e., vision, audition, imagery and so on).


 

Nitish_ThakorNitish V Thakor, Ph.D.
Provost Chair Professor, National University of Singapore
Director, Singapore Institute for Neurotechnology
Professor, Biomedical Engineering and Neurology, Johns Hopkins Medical School, USA

Nitish V. Thakor is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering. Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Neurology at Johns Hopkins and directs the Laboratory for Neuroengineering. He is also the Director the Singapore Institute for Neurotechnology (SINAPSE) at the National University of Singapore. Dr. Thakor’s technical expertise is in the field of Neuroengineering, including neural diagnostic instrumentation, neural microsystems, neural signal processing, optical imaging of the nervous system, neural control of prosthesis and brain machine interface. He is currently the Editor in Chief (EIC) of Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing, and was the EIC of IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering from 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, Founding Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society, and Fellow of International Federation of Medical and Biological Engineering.  He is a recipient of the award of Technical Excellence in Neuroengineering from IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Distinguished Alumnus Award from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India, and a Centennial Medal from the University of Wisconsin School of Engineering.


 

JosŽ del Millan, Electrodes permettant le tŽlŽguidage par "la pensŽe"Prof. Dr. José del R. Millán
Defitech Chair in Non-Invasive Brain-Machine Interface
School of Engineering Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
Lausanne Switzerland

José del R. Millán is the Defitech Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) where he explores the use of brain signals for multimodal interaction and, in particular, the development of non-invasive brain-controlled robots and neuroprostheses. In this multidisciplinary research effort, Dr. Millán is bringing together his pioneering work on the two fields of brain-machine interfaces and adaptive intelligent robotics. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from the Univ. Politècnica de Catalunya (Barcelona, Spain) in 1992. His research on brain-machine interfaces was nominated finalist of the European Descartes Prize 2001 and he has been named Research Leader 2004 by the journal Scientific American for his work on brain-controlled robots. He is the recipient of the IEEE Nobert Wiener Award 2011 for his seminal and pioneering contributions to non-invasive brain-machine interfaces. Dr. Millán is the coordinator of a number of European projects on brain-machine interfaces.


 

silvestro_miceraSilvestro Micera, Ph.D.
Translational Neural Engineering Lab, Head
Center for Neuroprosthetics and Institute of Bioengineering,School of Engineering,Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL)
Neural Engineering Area, Head
The BioRobotics Institute,Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna,Pisa, Italy

Silvestro Micera is currently Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Pisa, Italy) and at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (Lausanne, Switzerland). He received the University degree (Laurea) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pisa, in 1996, and the Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering from the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, in 2000. From 2000 to 2009, he has been an Assistant Professor of BioRobotics at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna where he is now Associate Professor and the Head of the Neural Engineering group. In 2009 he was the recipient of the “Early Career Achievement Award” of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. From 2011 he is Associate Professor and Head of the Translational Neural Engineering Laboratory at the EPFL. Dr. Micera’s research interests include the development of hybrid neuroprosthetic systems (interfacing the central and peripheral nervous systems with artificial systems) and of mechatronic and robotic systems for function and assessment restoration in disabled and elderly persons. He is currently Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering and of IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering. He is also member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation, of Journal of Neural Engineering, and of the IEEE Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine.


 

nigel_lovellNigel Lovell, Ph.D.
Scientia Professor at the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney,Australia

Nigel Lovell received the B.E. (Hons) and Ph.D. degrees from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia. He is currently at the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering UNSW where he holds a position of Scientia Professor. He has authored 400+ journals and refereed conference proceedings, and been awarded over $76 million in R&D and infrastructure funding. His research work has covered areas of expertise ranging from cardiac modeling, telehealth technologies, biological signal processing, and visual prosthesis design. Through a spin-out company from UNSW, TeleMedCare Pty. Ltd., he has commercialised a range of telehealth technologies for managing chronic disease and falls in the older population. He is also one of the key researchers leading an R&D program to develop in Australia a retinal neuroprosthesis or ‘bionic eye’, the work dating back to 1997 when he and colleague A/Prof Gregg Suaning commenced their research in this area.


 

Ben_WahBenjamin W. Wah, Ph.D.
Provost and Wei Lun Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong

Benjamin W. Wah is currently the Provost and Wei Lun Professor of Computer Science and Engineering of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Before then, he served as the Director of the Advanced Digital Sciences Center in Singapore, as well as the Franklin W. Woeltge Endowed Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Professor of the Coordinated Science Laboratory of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL. He received his Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, CA, in 1979. He has received a number of awards for his research contributions, which include the IEEE CS Technical Achievement Award (1998), the IEEE Millennium Medal (2000), the IEEE-CS W. Wallace-McDowell Award (2006), the Pan Wen-Yuan Outstanding Research Award (2006), the IEEE-CS Richard E. Merwin Award (2007), the IEEE-CS Tsutomu Kanai Award (2009), and the Distinguished Alumni Award in Computer Science of the University of California, Berkeley (2011). Wah’s current research interests are in the areas of big data applications and multimedia signal processing.

Wah cofounded the IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering in 1988 and served as its Editor-in-Chief between 1993 and 1996, and is the Honorary Editor-in-Chief of Knowledge and Information Systems. He currently serves on the editorial boards of Information Sciences, International Journal on Artificial Intelligence Tools, Journal of VLSI Signal Processing, and World Wide Web. He has served the IEEE Computer Society in various capacities, including Vice President for Publications (1998 and 1999) and President (2001). He is a Fellow of the AAAS, ACM, and IEEE.


 

Peter_HunterPeter Hunter, DPhil, FRS
Professor in Engineering Science at Auckland University
Director of Bioengineering Institute at Auckland University
Visiting Professor in Computational Physiology at University of Oxford

Professor in Engineering Science at Auckland University, Director of Bioengineering Institute at Auckland University, and Visiting Professor in Computational Physiology at University of Oxford. Prof Hunter completed an engineering degree in 1971 in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (now Engineering Science) 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. He is helping to lead the international Physiome Project which aims 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 and Director of the Bioengineering Institute at the University of Auckland, Director of Computational Physiology at Oxford University and holds honorary or visiting Professorships at a number of Universities. He is on the scientific advisory boards of a number of Research Institutes in Europe, the US and the Asia-Pacific region. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society (London and NZ), the World Council for Biomechanics, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and the International Academy of Medical & Biological Engineering.


 

david_townsendDavid Townsend, Ph.D.
Director, A*STAR-NUS Clinical Imaging Research Centre (CIRC)

David W. Townsend obtained his B.Sc in Physics from Bristol University and his Ph.D. in Particle Physics from the University of London and was a staff member for eight years at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. He has worked on PET instrumentation development since the early eighties, and designed and built the first rotating partial ring PET scanner using BGO block detectors. In 1995, Dr Townsend was Principal Investigator on the first proposal to design and build a combined PET/CT scanner. The PET/CT scanner, attributed to Dr Townsend and Dr Nutt, then President of CPS Innovations, was named by TIME Magazine as the medical invention of the year 2000. In recognition of his work on PET/CT, Dr Townsend received the 2004 Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award from the Academy of Molecular Imaging, and the 2008 Nuclear Medicine Pioneer Award from the Austrian Society of Nuclear Medicine. In 2006, he was elected a Fellow of the IEEE and in 2009 received an honorary doctorate from the University of the Mediterranean, Marseille, France. He shared with Dr Ron Nutt the 2010 IEEE Medal for Innovations in Healthcare Technology. In July 2009, he became Head of PET and SPECT Development for the Singapore Bioimaging Consortium, Professor of Radiology at the National University of Singapore and was appointed Director of the A*STAR-NUS Clinical Imaging Research Center, Singapore in December 2010. In 2012, Dr Townsend was elected an Honorary Fellow of the UK Royal College of Radiologists and he also received the Vikram Sarabhai Distinguished Oration Award from the Indian Society of Nuclear Medicine. In July, 2013 he received an honorary D.Sc. from the University of Bristol in the UK.


 

 Michael I. Miller, Ph.D.
Herschel and Ruth Seder Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Whiting School of Engineering,
Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Director of Center for Imaging Science, Gilman Scholar, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA

Michael Miller is a biomedical engineer and pattern theorist whose research interest focuses on computational anatomy in medical imaging and the brain. He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1984, and from 1984 until 1998, he was on the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis, where in 1995 he was named the Newton R. and Sarah L. Wilson Professor in Biomedical Engineering. He joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in 1998 in the department of Biomedical Engineering where he was named the Herschel and Ruth Seder Professor in Biomedical Engineering .

Miller has co-authored more than 200 peer-reviewed archival publications. Miller has co-authored two textbooks, the first with Donald L. Snyder entitled Random Point Processes in Space and Time (most recent edition, 1991), and the second with Ulf Grenander elaborating their pioneering efforts on Computational Anatomy entitled Pattern Theory: From Representation to Inference (2007). He has been honored for his work, including the national IEEE Biomedical Engineering Thesis Award first prize in 1982, the Johns Hopkins Paul Ehrlich Graduate Student Thesis Award in 1983 and the Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1986. In 2002 he was recognized by ISI Essential Science Indicators for garnering the highest rate of increase in total citations in the field of engineering for his work in Computational Anatomy, and in 2003 he received the International Man of the Year Award by the International Biographical Center in Cambridge.


 

Rashid_BashirRashid Bashir, Ph.D.
Abel Bliss Professor and Head of Bioengineering Department
University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, IL, USA

Rashid Bashir is Abel Bliss Professor and Head of Department at UIUC. Previously, he was the Director of the Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory (a campus-wide clean room facility), and Co-Director of the campus-wide Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, a “collaboratory” aimed at facilitating center grants and large initiatives around campus in the area of nanotechnology. He has authored or co-authored over 160 journal papers, over 160 conference papers and conference abstracts, and over 100 invited talks, and has been granted 34 patents. He is a fellow of IEEE, AIMBE, AAAS, and APS.

His research interests include bionanotechnology, BioMEMS, lab on a chip, interfacing of biology and engineering from the molecular to the tissue scale, and applications of semiconductor fabrication to biomedical engineering, all applied to solving biomedical problems. He has been involved in 2 startups that have licensed his technologies (BioVitesse, Inc. and Daktari Diagnostics).

In addition to leading his own research group, he is the PI on an NSF IGERT on Cellular and Molecular Mechanics and Bionanotechnology and PI on an NIH Training Grant on Cancer Nanotechnology. He is also a campus lead on an NSF Science and Technology Center on Emergent Behavior of Integrated Cellular Systems (headquartered at MIT, with partners at Georgia Tech and UIUC). He also serves on the external advisory board of the NIH-funded BioMEMS Resource Center at Harvard/MGH and the NIH-funded Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence at Stanford University, and on various editorial boards.


 

Luke P. Lee,Ph.D.
Arnold and Barbara Silverman Distinguished Professor of Bioengineering
Director of the Biomedical Institute of Global Healthcare Research & Technology
University of California, Berkeley, USA

Luke P. Lee is a 2010 Ho-Am Laureate. He is Arnold and Barbara Silverman Distinguished Professor of Bioengineering at UC Berkeley, the Director of the Biomedical Institute of Global Healthcare Research & Technology (BIGHEART) and a Co-Director of the Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center. He was Chair Professor in Systems Nanobiology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH, Zurich). He received his B.A. in Biophysics and Ph.D. in Applied Science & Technology: Applied Physics (major) / Bioengineering (minor) from UC Berkeley. He has more than ten years of industrial experience in integrated optoelectronics, Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices (SQUIDs), and biomagnetic assays. His current research interests are bionanoscience, nanomedicine for global healthcare and personalized medicine, and Bioinspired Photonics-Optofluidics-Electronics Technology and Science (BioPOETS) for green building with living skin. Prof. Lee has authored and co-authored over 250 papers on bionanophotonics, microfluidics, single cell biology, quantitative biomedicine, molecular diagnostics, optofluidics, BioMEMS, biosensors, SQUIDs, SERS, and nanogap junction biosensor for label-free biomolecule detection.


 

 Balram Bhargava, MBBS, MD, DM, FRCP(Glasg), FRCP(Edin), FACC, FAHA, FIACS, FAMS, FNASc
Professor, Department of Cardiology, Cardiothoracic Sciences Centre,
Executive Director, Stanford India Biodesign Centre,
All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, INDIA

Balram Bhargava is Professor of Cardiology at the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi and also serves as the Executive Director for Stanford India Biodesign Centre. Professor (Dr) Balram Bhargava is an outstanding cardiologist, one of the foremost leaders in biomedical innovation, public health, medical education and medical research. He developed the indigenous Platinum Iridium coronary stent and has been instrumental in clinically evaluating Indian stents.These low cost indigenous stents have benefited several thousand patients. He set up the Centre for Excellence for Stem Cell Studies, which has initiated treatment of patients with dilated cardiomyopathy for the first time in the world. This has benefited number of no-option patients waiting on the cardiac transplant list.

He has excellent leadership qualities; and has promoted the India-Stanford Biodesign programme, a unique interdisciplinary programme to foster innovation, design in low cost implants/devices.This fellowship on Biomedical Technology Innovation and has led to over twenty patents on low cost medical devices. He is currently developing the Chest Compression Device for Sudden Cardiac Death patients; funded by the Wellcome Trust. He is providing leadership for creative disease prevention, early detection and transport system for sick cardiac patients. He is an innovator par excellence with innovations touching everyday lives with very huge impact. He has been awarded the SN Bose Centenary award by the Indian National Science Congress and National Academy of Sciences Platinum Jubilee Award, Tata Innovation Fellowship and Vasvik Award for Biomedical Technology Innovation.


 

YT_ZhangYuan-Ting Zhang, Ph.D.
Director of Joint Research Center for Biomedical Engineering
Professor of Department of Electronic Engineering
Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Dr. Yuan-Ting Zhang is currently the Director of Joint Research Center for Biomedical Engineering and Professor of Department of Electronic Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Hong Kong, China. He serves concurrently the Director of the Key Lab for Health Informatics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (HICAS) at SIAT, Shenzhen, China. He is the first Head of the Division of Biomedical Engineering at CUHK and the founding Director of the CAS-SIAT Institute of Biomedical and Health Engineering. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine (T-ITB).

Dr. Zhang’s current research interests include wearable medical devices, body sensor networks, physiological modeling, neural engineering, cardiovascular health informatics, and m-u-p-Heath technologies. He has authored and co-authored over 500 scientific publications in BME and filed over 30 patents, some of which have been successfully licensed for commercialization. His research work has won him and his students/teams numerous honors/awards including the best journal paper awards from IEEE-EMBS, best conference paper awards from IFMBE, and the Grand Award in e-Health at the Asia-Pacific ICTAAC in Melbourne in 2009. He is the recipient of the IEEE-EMBS outstanding service award in 2006.

Dr. Zhang holds the fellowships from the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the development of wearable medical devices and mobile health technologies.


 

 Herbert F. Voigt, Ph.D.
Professor, Biomedical Engineering Boston University, USA
President, International Union for Physical and Engineering Sciences in Medicine (IUPESM)

Herbert F. Voigt, a professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University, is currently President (2012-2015) of the International Union for Physical and Engineering Sciences in Medicine (IUPESM), which is a member Union of the International Council of Sciences (ISCU). He is also the immediate Past-President of the International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE, 2009-2012). He has served as President of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE, 2006-2007), the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES, 1999) and Alpha Eta Mu Beta (the National Biomedical Engineering Honor Society, 2002-2008). Professor Voigt received his B.E. in electrical engineering from the City College of New York (CCNY) in 1974 and his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1979. He has been a member of the IEEE since 1974. He spent a post-doctoral year at Hopkins before moving to Boston. He received an Alumni Career Achievement Award from CCNY in 1994 and he was elected to the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars in 2003. He also received the Biomedical Engineering Society’s President’s Award (2002) and its Distinguished Service Award (2004). He is a Founding Fellow of BMES (2004) and a Fellow of AIMBE (1998). He was recently selected to be an IEEE/EMBS Distinguished Lecturer for 2012-2013 and was elected an honorary member of the Swedish Society of Medical Engineering and Physics (2012). His research interests include the neural circuitry of the cochlear nucleus; heavy metal detection and Global Health and Development.


 

 Eng Eong Ooi BMBS, PhD, FRCPath
Associate Professor, Deputy Director
Emerging Infectious Diseases Program, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School

Eng Eong Ooi is an Associate Professor and Deputy Director of the Program in Emerging Infectious Diseases, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School. He is a clinician-scientist by training and his research on dengue is focused at the interface between clinical epidemiology, virology and immunology. His laboratory is interested in how antibodies either protect against or enhance dengue virus infection and what viral factors determine epidemic dengue activity.


 

Yoh-Chie Lu Yoh-Chie Lu, BS, MBA
Executive Chairman, Biosensors International Group Ltd.

Mr Lu, founder of Biosensors International Group Ltd, was chairman and CEO from its inception to 2008. He retained his chairman position since January 2008. Mr Lu previously established Asia-based operations for the Medical Division of Gould Inc. After a management-led leveraged buyout of the division from Gould, Mr Lu continued as president of the Asia-Pacific division until it was sold to British Oxygen Corporation. In 1990, Mr Lu founded Sun Instruments-Japan, Sunscope International in California and Biosensors International in Singapore, all of which are now subsidiaries of Biosensors International Group, Ltd. Mr Lu holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and an MBA from the Thunderbird Graduate School of International Management in Arizona.


 

 Bijan Dorri, Ph.D.
Chief Technology Officer, GE Healthcare Systems

Bijan has been the CTO of GE Healthcare Systems since 2011, where he drove the technology for a $13B business involving all medical devices such as MRI, CT, X-ray, PET, Ultrasound, Monitoring, and Anesthesia. Prior to that, Bijan has been the General Manager of Molecular Imaging and Computed Tomography Engineering from July of 2007. Before joining GE Healthcare, Bijan was the Managing Director of the GE China Technology Center in Shanghai, China for 3 years where he led all of GE’s Technology and Sourcing in China.

Bijan’s career with GE started in 1983 when he joined GE Corporate R&D (now GRC) as a research scientist. As a scientist, he worked in a wide range of technologies and for a variety of GE businesses, including thermal modeling for Aircraft Engines, MR Magnet development for Medical Systems, new Range design for Appliances, and Tungsten Ingot Sintering for Lighting. His research resulted in 56 issued patents and over 40 publications.

In 1997, he became the project manager for X-ray Tubes, leading all R&D activities of Tubes technology. In 1998 he became the manager of Integrated Quality and Reliability Programs, leading a group of about 30 people globally, performing R&D in Circuit breakers, Gas Turbines, X-ray Tubes, and Refrigerators. Late 1999, he was appointed as the manager of the Electronic Systems Laboratory, leading a global group of about 150 researchers involved in MRI and Ultrasound R&D for Medical Systems, Visualization and Computer vision for a variety of GE businesses, as well as Communication technologies for Lockheed Martin, Medical Systems, and a number of other GE businesses. In 2001, Bijan was named the Global Technology Leader for Imaging Technologies, leading a 200 member global team performing research in Imaging Physics, Imaging Equipment (MRI, Ultrasound, CT, X-ray, PET), Image Extraction & Analysis, Biotechnology, and Clinical Applications.

Bijan has his BS Degree in Chemical Engineering from Shiraz University in Iran, his MS Degree in Industrial Engineering, and his PhD in Mechanical Engineering both from the University of Washington.


 

 Steven Myint, M.D., Ph.D.
Chairman, Board of Directors, Plexpress
Managing Director of Moewin Associates

Steven is Chairman of Plexpress Oy, a Finnish biotech company, and Director of Moewin Associates which provides consultancy to the health and biopharmaceutical industries. He is a physician with broad experience at board and executive level in academia, biopharmaceutical and the third sector. He is a former Professor and Dean of Medicine & Health at the University of Surrey and Professor of Microbiology & Immunology at the University of Leicester. He has been a global Medical Director at GlaxoSmithKline and Senior Vice-President for R&D/Chief Medical Officer at BTG International. He is also a former Senior Independent Director in the NHS and Board Member of Care International, and was executive chairman of Onmedica Group Ltd and Onmedica India Private Ltd. He is currently a Director of the European Federation of Neurological Associations, consultant to several organisations in the medical and financial worlds and member of several national and international advisory boards. He has authored over 120 peer reviewed publications and 6 books. He is a Fellow or Member of several societies, including the Institute of Knowledge Transfer, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal Society of Medicine. He has an international reputation in infectious disease research and vaccine development.


 

Stephen_QuakeStephen Quake, Ph.D.
Otterson Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics, Stanford University

Professor Stephen Quake earned his B.S. in Physics and M.S..in Mathematics from Stanford in 1991 and his D.Phil. in Physics from Oxford University in 1994 as a Marshall Scholar.. Quake joined the faculty of the California Institute of Technology where was ultimately appointed the Thomas and Doris Everhart Professor of Applied Physics and Physics. He moved back to Stanford University in 2005 to help launch a new department in Bioengineering, where he is now the Lee Otterson Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Quake has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, the American Physical Society and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. He is the recipient of numerous international awards, including the Human Frontiers of Science Nakasone Prize, the MIT-Lemelson Prize for Innovation, the Raymond and Beverly Sackler International Prize in Biophysics, the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, the American Society of Microbiology’s Promega Biotechnology Award, and the Royal Society of Chemistry Publishing’s Pioneer of Miniaturization Award. He has founded or co-founded several companies, including Fluidigm, Helicos, Verinata Health, Quanticel Pharmaceuticals, Moleculo, Cellular Research and Immumetrix.

Quake is a leader in experimental biophysics known for his pioneering new approaches to biological measurement. He has made many contributions to the field of microfluidics, including the invention of microfluidic large scale integration, and developed applications of microfluidics to areas as diverse as structural biology, drug discovery, and molecular affinity measurements. He has also made numerous contributions to the field of genomics, including the first single molecule DNA sequencing, techniques to perform single cell gene expression and genome sequencing, the development of non-invasive prenatal diagnostics to replace amniocentesis, prenatal genome sequencing, non-invasive tests for heart transplant rejection, and the development of approaches to sequence and analyze an individual’s immune system.


 

 Florian Solzbacher, Ph.D.
Chairman and President of Blackrock Microsystems and Professor in Electrical Engineering and Computing and Director of the Center for Engineering Innovation at the University of Utah

Prof. Solzbacher is Director of the Center for Engineering Innovation, Co-Director of the Utah Nanotechnology Institute, President and Executive Chairman of Blackrock Microsystems and of Blackrock Neuromed and is a Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering with adjunct appointments in Materials Science and Bioengineering at the University of Utah. His research focuses on harsh environment microsystems and materials, including implantable, wireless microsystems for biomedical and healthcare applications, and on high temperature and harsh environment compatible micro sensors. Prof. Solzbacher received his M.Sc. EE from the Technical University Berlin in 1997 and his Ph.D. from the Technical University Ilmenau in 2003. He is co-founder of several companies such as Blackrock Microsystems, Blackrock Neuromed, and First Sensor Technology. He was executive Director of the Utah Nanofabrication Laboratory until August 2013 lobbying for and establishing the new USTAR funded Utah Nanofabrication Cleanroom and Characterization facility. He was a board member and Chairman of the German Association for Sensor Technology AMA and of Sensor + Test trade show and conference from 2001 until 2009, and serves on a number of company and public private partnership advisory boards and international conference steering committees such as the NIH/NINDS Neural Interfaces Conference. He is author of over 190 journal and conference publications, 5 book chapters and 16 pending patents.