Ana Fred Instituto de Telecomunicações and Instituto Superior Técnico (University of Lisbon) Portugal

Brief Bio
Ana Fred received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering, in 1989 and 1994, respectively, both from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal. She is a Faculty Member of IST since 1986, where she has been a professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and more recently with the Department of Biomedical Engineering. She is a researcher at the Pattern and Image Analysis Group of the Instituto de Telecomunicações. Her main research areas are on pattern recognition, both structural and statistical approaches, with application to data mining, learning systems, behavioral biometrics, and biomedical applications. She has done pioneering work on clustering, namely on cluster ensemble approaches. Recent work on biosensors hardware (including BITalino – and ECG-based biometrics (Vitalidi project) have been object of several nacional and internacional awards, as well as wide dissemination on international media, constituting a success story of knowledge transfer from research to market. She has published over 160 papers in international refereed conferences, peer reviewed journals, and book chapters. ... More >>

Hugo Gamboa LIBPhys, Physics Department, Nova School of Science and Technology, Nova University of Lisbon Portugal

Brief Bio
Hugo Gamboa is an Assistant Professor at the Physics Department of the Sciences and Technology Faculty of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa and member of LIBPHYS. PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon. As a Senior Scientist at Fraunhofer Portugal coordinates the Lisbon Office research group with the focus on Intelligent Systems. He is a founder and President of PLUX, a technology-based innovative startup in the field wireless medical sensors, focused on microelectronics, biosignal processing and software development.

 

Ana Cecilia Roque UCIBIO, Departamento de Química, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa Portugal https://sites.fct.unl.pt/biomolecular_eng/

Brief Bio
Ana Roque is an Associate Professor in Bioengineering at the Chemistry Department, School of Science & Technology at NOVA University (Lisbon, Portugal). Cecilia is a principal researcher at UCIBIO-NOVA and leads the Biomolecular Engineering Lab. She holds a degree in Chemical Engineering (Major in Biotechnology) & a PhD in Biotechnology from Instituto Superior Técnico, and has an Habilitation in Bioengineering from NOVA University of Lisbon. Cecilia has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge and at the Catholic University of America, a Post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Biotechnology (Un iversity of Cambridge) and at INESC-MN (Lisbon, Portugal), and a visiting Professor at the University of Cambridge (2006, 2011), University of São Paulo (2015-2018), University of Nantes (2011) and City University of New York (2018). Her research focus on bioengineering, namely on the development of advanced functional materials that combineaffinity receptors with bio-based and sustainable materials for bioseparation, sensing and biomedical applications. Cecilia has been the recipient of several national and international awards, namely a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (2014). She has training from biotech entrepreneurial programs (Cambridge Entrepreneurship Center, University of Cambridge and COTEC, PT). Cecilia has published 91 papers in top journals in bioengineering, multidisciplinary and materials sciences (e.g. Adv. Funct. Materials, Scientific Reports, TIBTECH) with over 2400 citations. She edited 2 books and contributed with 9 book chapters. Her research work has also resulted in 3 international patents. Cecilia has wide experience in supervision with completed 9 postdoctoral fellows, 11 PhD students and 36 Master students. She is a member of several international societies and currently serves as a Board member (2014-2019) and Co-Chair (2019-) to the Bioengineering and Bioprocessing Division of the European Federation of Biotechnology and vice-president (2019-) of the International Society for Molecular Recognition. Cecilia has been part of organising and steering committees of several international conferences and training schools. ... More >>

 

Denis Gracanin Computer Science, Virginia Tech United States http://www.cs.vt.edu/~gracanin

Brief Bio
Denis Gracanin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech.
He received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 1994.
His research interests are at the intersection of human computer interaction and Internet of Things (IoT), including the design of and interactions in smart built environments (SBEs).
He is interested in using eXtended reality (XR) technology to effectively interact with IoT-enabled spaces (SBEs) to support contextualized interactions and collaboration.

 

Ronny Lorenz Institute for Theoretical Chemistry - Bioinformatics Group, University of Vienna Austria https://www.tbo.univie.ac.at/~ronny

Brief Bio
Ronny Lorenz is a bioinformatician who received
his PhD in molecular biology at the University of Vienna
in 2014. He currently holds a senior scientist
position at the Department of Theoretical Chemistry
of the University of Vienna, Austria.
His main research interests are various algorithmic
aspects in the field of RNA secondary structure
prediction and the development of novel methods to
simulate RNA folding kinetics. As a PI in the
bi-lateral project "PaRNAssus: Deciphering Complex RNA
structures by probing and interaction" (I 4520), funded
in parts by the Austrian F onds zur Förderung der
wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF) and the French
National Research Agency (ANR), he is investigating
the effect of structural motifs on experimental RNA
probing data. Since 2010, he is the leading developer
of the ViennaRNA Package. ... More >>

 

Athanasios Tsanas Usher Institute, Medical School, University of Edinburgh United Kingdom https://www.darth-group.com/thanasis-tsanas

Brief Bio
Thanasis studied Engineering for his undergraduate and MSc degrees and completed a PhD in Applied Mathematics at the University of Oxford (2012). He continued working at the University of Oxford as a Research Fellow in Biomedical Engineering and Applied Mathematics (2012-2016), Stipendiary Lecturer in Engineering Science (2014-2016), and Lecturer in Statistical Research Methods (2016-2019); he joined the Usher Institute, Edinburgh Medical School, University of Edinburgh in January 2017 on a prestigious tenure-track Chancellor’s Fellowship. He secured tenure a year early, in December 2019, and was promoted to Asso ciate Professor in Data Science (May 2020). Thanasis founded and leads the inter-disciplinary Data Analytics Research and Technology in Healthcare (DARTH) group (www.darth-group.com). He received the Andrew Goudie award (top PhD student across all disciplines, St. Cross, University of Oxford, 2011), the EPSRC Doctoral Prize award (2012), won the annual Physionet competition on 'Predicting mortality of ICU patients' (2012, as a key member of the Oxford biomedical engineering team) the young scientist award (MAVEBA, 2013), the EPSRC Statistics and Machine Learning award (2015), and won a ‘Best reviewer award’ from the IEEE Journal of Biomedical Health Informatics (2015). One of his research papers has been highlighted as a ‘key scientific article’ in Renewable Energy and Global Innovations, whilst some of his work has been covered in the media including Reuters. He leads the development and delivery of the 'Clinical Decision Support and Actionable Data Analytics' theme in the NHS Digital Academy, an innovative leadership programme in the UK which aims to annually train 100 CIOs and CCIOs and transform the NHS. He sits on the Editorial Boards of JMIR Mental Health and JMIR mHealth and uHealth. He is a Senior Member of IEEE, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine. ... More >>

 

Nathalie Bier School of rehabilitation, Université de Montréal, Research Center of the Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal Canada

Brief Bio
Nathalie Bier is full professor of occupational therapy at the Université de Montréal. She is also a researcher at the Research center of the Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal. The main goal of Nathalie Bier’s research program is to better understand the impact of cognitive deficits in aging and dementia on everyday function, as well as to develop non-pharmacological approaches to promote aging in place – such as the use of cognitive rehabilitation and new technology. She is leading major projects in the field of smart environments and connected objects for older adults with severe cognitive deficit s. She has guided 62 graduated students, authored or co-authored more than 100 scientific papers and is a recognized expert in Canada and at the European level in her field. ... More >>