Universities, R&D Groups and Academic Networks

BIOSTEC is a unique forum for universities, research groups and research projects to present their research and scientific results, be it by presenting a paper, hosting a tutorial or instructional course or demonstrating its research products in demo sessions, by contributing towards panels and discussions in the event's field of interest or by presenting their project, be it by setting up an exhibition booth, by being profiled in the event's web presence or printed materials or by suggesting keynote speakers or specific thematic sessions.

Special conditions are also available for Research Projects which wish to hold meetings at INSTICC events.

Current Academic Partners:

ANDREA-Active Nanocoated DRy-electrode for Eeg Applications

ANDREA is an EU-funded FP7-PEOPLE Marie Curie Industry-Academia Partnership and Pathways (IAPP) project running from 1st January 2014 until 31st December 2017 (http://cordis.europa.eu/projects/rcn/109927_en.html). The aim of ANDREA is to develop an Active Nanocoated DRy-electrode for Eeg Applications.
Multichannel electroencephalography (EEG) is a well-established method for investigating the function of the human brain. However, despite continuous advancements in signal amplification and data processing, difficult and error-prone signal acquisition on the head surface is still a major issue limiting its employment in basic and clinical research.
The purpose of the ANDREA project (http://www.andreaproject.eu/) is to develop a novel dry electrode EEG system with adjustable cap network provided with an automated sensor positioning mechanism, active preamplification and a SW toolbox for artifacts removal. The novel technologies address the requirements of high signal quality and reliability, mobility, high patient/subject comfort and long-term use, and will be validated in clinical and non clinical populations to produce a prototype optimized for broad EEG employment.
To achieve these objectives, the ANDREA consortium merges the complementary expertise and resources in biomedical engineering, material science, biomedical signal processing, neuroscience and clinical neurology available at 3 academic and 2 commercial (industry and health) partners from 3 EU countries: Italy, Germany and Portugal.
The ANDREA project is implemented through an extensive intersectoral transfer of knowledge that is realized by means of staff exchange, training courses, schools, and the recruitment of experienced researchers with supplementary expertise from outside the consortium. These actions enhance the research capacity and competitiveness of the ANDREA consortium, which will become a permanent EU research network promoting health technology in Europe.
The international mobility and the planned dissemination/outreach activities contribute to the sharing of different cultures and knowledge with the scientific community, and to promote a broader communication on the importance of research in biomedical engineering to the society at large.
http://www.andreaproject.eu/

NIW - Natural Interactive Walking

NIW will investigate possibilities for the integrated and interchangeable use of the haptic and auditory modality in floor interfaces, and for the synergy of perception and action in capturing and guiding human walking. Its objective is to provide closed-loop interaction paradigms, negotiated with users and validated through experiments, enabling the transfer of skills that have been previously learned in everyday tasks associated to walking, and where multisensory feedback and sensory substitution can be exploited to create unitary multimodal percepts. NIW will expose walkers to virtual scenes presenting grounds of different natures, populated with natural obstacles and human artefacts, in which to situate the sensing and display of haptic and acoustic information for interactive simulation, and where vision will play an integrative role. Experiments will measure the ecological validity of such scenarios, investigating also on the cognitive aspects of the underlying perceptual processes. Floor based interfaces will be designed and prototyped by making use of existing haptic and acoustic sensing and actuation devices, comprising interactive floor tiles and soles, with special attention to simplicity of technology. Its applicability to navigation aids such as landmarking, guidance to locations of interest, signalling, warning about obstacles and restricted areas, will be assessed. NIW will nurture floor and shoe designs which may impact the way we get information from the environment. FET-Open will further benefit from the discovery of cross-modal psychophysical phenomena, the design of ecologically valid walking interaction paradigms, the modeling of motion analysis and multimodal display synthesis algorithms, the study of non visual floor-based navigation aids, and the development of guidelines for the use of existing sensing and actuation technologies to create virtual walking interaction scenarios.
http://cordis.europa.eu/

Desiree

DESIREE is a European Union’s Horizon 2020 project from the Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No 690238 running from 1st February 2016.

The DESIREE project aims to provide a web-based software ecosystem for the personalized, collaborative and multidisciplinary management of Primary Breast Cancer by specialized Breast Units (BU), from diagnosis to therapy and follow-up. For that DESIREE provides decision support on the available therapy options by incorporating experience from previous cases and outcomes, and thus, going beyond the limitations of existing guideline-based decision support systems (DSS).

Specific interactive tools will be also developed for quantitatively analysing medical images and fusing (registering) different imaging modalities with complementary information for enhanced insight. The system will be also connected to a genomic and bioinformatics platform leveraging NGS data offered by Sistemas Genomicos (SIG) that will help personalized diagnostic and treatment and provide valuable information about predictive value in the outcomes of some treatments, based on the patient individual characteristics.

Another objective of DESIREE is to develop a virtual surgery tool that could be applied in clinical practice, based on a multi-scale physiological model that predicts the outcome of breast conservative therapy (BCT). The model will have important physical and psychological implications for the patient regarding the outcome of conservative surgery and will enhance the patient-physician interaction when choosing the treatment.

Finally, the heterogeneous data and knowledge bases, the DSS and the analysis and modelling tools will be integrated into a secure web-based software infrastructure. This web-based software will be provided with highly visual interfaces for exploring the patient case. It will bring the necessary features for enhancing the coordination and management of different patient cases in the BUs and for exploring all the accumulated heterogeneous multi-scale information from previous patient cases in an intuitive manner.

http://www.desiree-project.eu/

Horiuchi Laboratory (Application of Optics and Mechanical Engineering Laboratory)

Advanced Lithography Project for Developing New Bio-Devices” is urged in this laboratory.