Program Committee

Maria Pedro Guarino Polytechnic University of Leiria Portugal https://citechcare.ipleiria.pt/people/maria-pedro-guarino/

Short Bio
Maria Pedro Guarino is Coordenator Professor at the Polytechnic of Leiria and Head of the FCT R&D Unit – ciTechCare- Center for Innovative Care and Health Technology. PhD in Physiology by NOVA University of Lisbon and post-graduated in Pharmacology and Therapeutics by the University of Manitoba, Canada, her area of research is related to Medical and Health Sciences with an emphasis on Basic Medicine, Physiology and Pathology. As a PI she is currently dedicated to applying the scientific knowledge gathered in the last 15 years in the field of chronic disease biology to developing novel diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for obesity and type 2 diabetes, including nutritional approaches and medical devices. She collaborated with the Pharma industry, as disease biologist, translating her know-how as a pathophysiologic to into practice looking at biomarker profiling of chronic metabolic diseases and its application to develop distinctive signatures for diagnosis and prognosis purposes. Her research within this field originated 2 patents and the creation of a spin-off company. Recently she gained insight into the area of chronobiology as an innovative approach to tackle obesity and type 2 diabetes. In 2020 her research group was distinguished with the Emilio Peres Award, attributed by the Portuguese Society of Diabetology in the field of chrononutrition. She has over 50 publications from Web of Science Core Collections and supervises/co-supervises PhD and Master’s students. In 2018 she was appointed member of the Consulting Board of Leiria Hospital Center (CHL, E.P.E) by the Ministry of Health and she Coordinated the Health Think Tank created by the Leiria Municipality to structure the regional response to COVID 19 pandemics. She believes in the importance of applied knowledge and societal commitment, being involved in several outreach activities of Science Dissemination. ... More >>

Kazuhiro Hotta Meijo University Japan

Short Bio
Kazuhiro Hotta received the B.Eng., M.Eng., and Dr.Eng. degrees from Saitama University in 1997, 1999, and 2002, respectively. From 1999 to 2002, he was a JSPS research fellow (DC1). From 2002 to 2010, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Electro-Communications. From 2010 to 2018, he was an Associate Professor at Meijo University. Since 2018, he has been a Professor at Meijo University. In 2012, he was a visiting scholar at the University of Maryland. His current research interests include pattern recognition, computer vision, machine learning, artificial intelligence and bioimage computing. ... More >>

Malik Yousef Zefat Academic College Israel

Short Bio
Malik Yousef is a senior member of Tzfat Academic College in Israel. He received his Ph.D. in Computer science from the University of Haifa. His postdoctoral was at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia in the USA. He served as a dean of graduate study at the Colleg of Sakhnin. His main research interests are in computation methods applied to biomedical data.Malik Yousef is a senior member of Tzfat Academic College in Israel. He received his Ph.D. in Computer science from the University of Haifa. His postdoctoral was at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia in the USA. He served as a dean of graduate study at the Colleg of Sakhnin. His main research interests are in computation methods applied to biomedical data.

Hui Liu Independent Researcher Germany https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=GyLOsRwAAAAJ

Short Bio
Hui Liu is a researcher focusing on biomedical engineering, human activity recognition (HAR), rehabilitation assistance, machine learning (ML), virtual reality, music information retrieval (MIR), and general application of artificial intelligence (AI) in multidisciplinary fields. He developed the first mobile system that senses and recognizes its users' movements in real-time, utilizing proximity wearable sensors integrated into a knee bandage (2019), and contributed Motion Units, a human activity modeling method with interpretability, generalizability, and expandability, rationalizing knowledge from kinesiology and automatic speech recognition into HAR research (2021). ... More >>

Giovanni Saggio University of Tor Vergata, Rome Italy

Short Bio
Giovanni Saggio is recognized among the “World’s Top 2% Scientists” (Stanford University ranking, 2020-2025) and has been appointed “Distinguished Researcher” by the Institute for Systems and Technologies of Information, Control and Communication (INSTICC). Having earned his M.S. degree in Electronic Engineering in 1991 and his Ph.D. in Microelectronics and Telecommunications in 1996, he currently serves as an Associate Professor of Electronics at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata,” where he also holds the National Scientific Qualification as a Full Professor. Professor Saggio holds the chairs of both Fundamental and Advanced Electronics within the Faculties of Engineering and Medicine at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. His international teaching record includes courses on “Wearable Technologies” at the Hautes Écoles Spécialisées de Suisse occidentale (HES-SO), “Business Opportunities for Wearable Technology” at the School of Management Fribourg (HEG-FR) in Switzerland (2022-23), and “Biomedical Signals” for TAIEX (the European Commission’s Technical Assistance and Information Exchange instrument) in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina (2018). Furthermore, he served as a Keynote Speaker at the International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC, 2023) and at the NUIST summer school at Nanjing University, China (2025). On behalf of the European Commission, he coordinated the “IDIH” (International Collaboration Digital Transformation Healthy Ageing) international expert group on “Preventive Care” (2020-22), which involved Japan, South Korea, the USA, China, and Canada. During the same period, he also served as a Scientific Consultant for the Italian Vice-Minister of Health. His professional excellence has been recognized with several prestigious accolades, including the “Promotori Tecnologici per l’Innovazione” award (Provinciattiva SpA, 2010), the “Cuore Digitale Award” (2020), the “Innovation Business Award” (National ANGI Award, 2020), and the “Golden Wheel” (Rotary Club, 2022). An accomplished author, Professor Saggio has written numerous monographs and 10 textbooks in the field of electronics; notably, as a reference author for CRC Press, his work has been adopted by 23 universities across four continents. He has authored or co-authored over 200 scientific articles and maintains significant editorial roles, serving as Topic Editor and Guest Associate Editor for Frontiers (Lausanne, Switzerland), as well as Guest Editor, Academic Editor, and member of the Section and Editorial Boards for the journal Sensors (MDPI, Basel, Switzerland). His research activity is primarily focused on sensors and analog electronics for medical and sports applications. In this capacity, he has served as the principal investigator and coordinator for scientific projects funded by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), Armaereo (Ministry of Defense), INAIL, and the Ministry of Health. A prolific innovator, Professor Saggio is the inventor or co-inventor of 16 patents and has founded three successful spin-offs: Captiks Srl (wearable devices for medical and sports applications, 2012), Seeti Srl (telemedicine and remote monitoring, 2015), and Voicewise Srl (diagnosis of medical conditions and emotional states via voice analysis, 2019). ... More >>

Hannes Schlieter Technische Universität Dresden Germany

Short Bio
Dr. Hannes Schlieter is head of the Research Group Digital Health at the Faculty of Economics at TU Dresden. His research focuses on theories and design issues in the field of digital transformation, especially, but not exclusively, in the healthcare sector (Digital Health). His research contributions in the areas of methodological research, adaptation of digital care solutions, implementation of digital health ecosystems, standardization and digitization of patient pathways, and design and development of virtual coaching applications reflect the interdisciplinary nature of his research in national, as well as international research collaborations. Furthermore, from 2017-2020 he was the head of the junior research group Care4Saxony. In the Research Group Digital Health, Dr. Hannes Schlieter is responsible for strategic orientation, international cooperation, and third-party funding activities. In this role, he works EU projects like vCare, collaborates in Gatekeeper, and is part of national projects, such as MiHubX and QPATH4MS. ... More >>