You can download the programme or the timetable, in pdf format.

Please find below the list of speakers and the title of their talk.

Invited speakers and subjects

Demonstrations

University of Houston, TX, USA

Metin Akay received his B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey in 1981 and 1984, respectively and a Ph.D. degree from Rutgers University in 1990. He is currently the founding chair of the new Biomedical Engineering Department and the John S. Dunn professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Houston. He has played a key role in promoting biomedical education in the world by writing and editing several books, editing several special issues of prestigious journals, including the Proc of IEEE, and giving several keynote and plenary talks at international conferences, symposiums and workshops regarding emerging technologies in biomedical and healthcare engineering. He is the founding editor-in-chief of the Biomedical Engineering Book Series, the editor of the Neural Engineering Handbook published by Wiley/IEEE Press and the first steering committee chair of the IEEE Trans on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. He is the founding chair of the IEEE EMBS Special Topic Conference on Neural Engineering. He is also the chair of the IEEE EMBS Neuroengineering Technical Committee. He was the program chair of the International IEEE EMBS 2001 and the co-chair of the International IEEE EMBS 2006. He currently serves on the advisory board of several international journals including the IEEE T-BME, IEEE T-ITIB, Smart Engineering Systems etc. and furthermore serves on several NIH and NSF review panels. Dr. Akay is a recipient of the IEEE EMBS Early Career and Service awards as well an IEEE Third Millenium Medal. His Neural Engineering and Informatics Lab is interested in developing an intelligent wearable system for monitoring motor functions in Post-Stroke Hemiplegic Patients and detecting coronary artery disease. In addition, his lab is currently investigating the effect of nicotine on the dynamics of ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopamine neural networks.

Professor at the Department of Artificial Intelligence at the Polytechnic University of Madrid.

Concha Bielza received the M.S. degree in mathematics from Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain, in 1989 and the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, in 1996. She is currently an Associate Professor of statistics and operations research with the Departamento de Inteligencia Artificial, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Her research interests are primarily in the areas of probabilistic graphical models, decision analysis, metaheuristics for optimization, data mining, classification models, and real applications. Her research has appeared in journals like Management Science, Computers and Operations Research, Statistics and Computing, the European Journal of Operational Research, Decision Support Systems, Naval Research Logistics, the Journal of the Operational Research Society, Bioinformatics, Medical Decision Making, Methods of Information in Medicine, the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, and Expert Systems with Applications and as chapters of many books.

Electrical Neuroimaging Group, HUG (University Hospital of Geneve), CH

The Electrical Neuroimaging Group of Sara Gonzalez Andino works on the development of methods and models for the study of the bio-electro-magnetic activity of the human body and the decoding of the information contained on available electrophysiological signals. In particular her group works on data collected at their own facilities or from different national and international collaborators namely: - EEG signals recorded in humans - Multiunit activity recorded in monkeys and - Local Field Potentials recorded in patients and monkeys. As for the methods they are focused on the development of methods to deal with multivariate spatio temporal time series as: - Short EEG windows as used for the Single Trial anlysis - Analysis of short non stationary signals in the time and the spectral domain. - Development of methods for the non invasive estimation of the activity inside the brain. - Conectivity analysis using scalp measured data, intracranial recordings or Local Field Potentials non invasively estimated from the EEG. - Multivariate pattern recognition techniques.

Department of Human Physiology and Pharmacology, Biophysics Interest Group, University of Rome "La Sapienza", Italy

Fabio Babiloni was born in Rome in 1961. He got the master degree in Electronic Engineering at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" summa cum laude in 1986, and the PhD in Computational Engineering at the Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki in the 2000 with a dissertation on the multimodal integration of EEG and fMRI. He is currently Associate Professor of Human Physiology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Rome "La Sapienza", Rome, Italy. He is author of more that 75 papers on bioengineering and neurophysiological topics on international peer-reviewed scientific journals. Currents interests are in the field of multimodal integration of EEG, MEG and fMRI data, cortical connectivity estimation and Brain Computer Interface. Prof. Babiloni is member of the International Society of Bioelectromagnetism, the Italian Society of Physiology and the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology. He is an Associate Editor of the scientific Journals Clinical Neurophysiology, International Journal of Bioelectromagnetism, IEEE Trans. On Neural System and Rehabilitation Engineering, and Journal of Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience.

Department of Medical Physics, School of Medicine, University of Patras, Greece

Anastasios Bezerianos is Professor of Medical Physics in Medical School of Patras University, Greece and Visiting Professor in Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He has studied Physics in Patras University and Telecommunications in Athens University and he received his Ph.D. form Patras Medical School. He has in permanent base, cooperation with research centers and university institutes in Japan, USA and Europe and he is Associate Editor of IEEE TNSRE journal and reviewer in numerous international scientific journals of IEEE and IFMBE and of other scientific societies. His research interests are on Biomedical Signal Processing and Modeling the Biological Systems Complexity. The current research is focused on problems of (1) Multivariate, Multiorgan, Multiscale Integration of Information in Biomedical Signal Processing like EEG and MEG Signals Analysis in Understanding and Modeling Brain Functioning, Information Processing (Entropy and Mutual Information) as Quantitative Electrical Measures of Brain Injury and Brain Computer Interface – Assistive Technologies, (2) Nonlinear Time Series Analysis -Complex System Dynamics, (3) Computational Intelligence Application in Proteomics and Post-Genomics Data Modeling and Analysis (4) Cellular and Sub-cellular Modeling of Heart Tissue and Anti-arrhythmic and Hypertensive Drugs. He is founder and Chairman of the biannual International Summer School on Emerging Technologies in Biomedicine.

Dept. of Organismal Biology & Anatomy, Committees on Computational Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Center for Integrative Neuroscience and Neuroengineering Research (CINNR) University of Chicago, US

Nicholas G. "Nicho" Hatsopoulos, Ph.D. is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Chicago. Dr. Hatsopoulos is also Chairman of the Computational Neuroscience graduate program. He is currently running a laboratory with five graduate students, two postdoctoral fellows, and several technicians which is funded in part by the National Institutes of Health. From January 1998 to December 2001, Dr. Hatsopoulos was an Assistant Professor of Research in the Department of Neuroscience at Brown University. Dr. Hatsopoulos completed two postdoctoral research fellowships, one in the Department of Neuroscience at Brown University and the other in the Computational Neuroscience Program at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Hatsopoulos completed his B.A. in Physics from Williams College in 1984, his M.S. in Psychology in 1991 and his Ph.D. in Cognitive Science from Brown University in 1992. In 2001, he co-founded a company, Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems, which took the basic scientific research he and his colleagues conducted to develop neural prosthesis technology to assist people with severe motor disabilities. His research focuses on the neural basis of motor control and learning. He is investigating what features of motor behavior are encoded and how this information is represented in the collective activity of neuronal ensembles in the motor cortex. He is also interested in how these representations change as motor learning occurs. To answer these questions, the electrical discharge of many motor cortical neurons is simultaneously recorded using multi- electrode arrays and correlated with motor behavior. The encoding properties of individual motor cortical neurons are being studied to determine how these single cell properties relate to higher-order representations involving groups of neurons. The possibility that changes in functional connectivity among neurons may occur during motor learning is also being explored.

AAI Scientific Cultural Services Ltd, Nicosia, Cyprus

Prof. Andreas A. Ioannides, PhD is the Managing Director of AAI Scientific Cultural Services Ltd. He has graduated with first class Honours in Physics (1973) and continued for his PhD (1976) at the Physics department of Surrey University. He worked for 10 years in theoretical nucliear physics, mostly in the UK. From 1987 he first moved to research in the inverse problem in biomagnetism and within a few years to application studies of magnetoencephalography (MEG) in the field of neuroscience. He set up two theory teams in the UK (1988-1998). Between 1995 and 1998, he also headed the MEG laboratory at the Institute of Medicine, Juelich Research Center in Germany. From 1998 to 2009, he established and headed the MEG laboratory at RIKEN Brain Science Institute near Tokyo Japan and initiated numerous international collaborations in its ten year life-time. In 2007, he set up the laboratory for human brain dynamics in his native Cyprus in 2007 and has moved back to Cyprus since 2009. He has published well over 100 scientific papers. The emphasis of his new lab in Cyprus is to turn neuroscience knowledge into useful tools for general well being and clinical applications.

Professor of Healthcare Technology and Director of a the Institute of Digital Healthcare, University of Warwick, UK

Christopher James was born in Malta, received the B.Elec.Eng. (Hons) degree in from the University of Malta (1992) and a Ph.D from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand (1997). He was a postdoctoral research fellow at the EEG department of the Montreal Neurological Institute, of McGill University, Montreal, Canada (1997-1998), and a postdoctoral research fellow (1998-2001), and then Lecturer (2001-2003) with the Neural Computing Research Group of Aston University, Birmingham, UK. From 2004-2010 he was a Reader in Biomedical Signal Processing at the University of Southampton, UK. He is now at the University of Warwick, UK.
Professor James is a biomedical engineer and his research activity centers on the development of biomedical signal and pattern processing techniques; primarily his work has concentrated on the development of advanced processing techniques applied to the analysis of the electromagnetic activity of the human brain, primarily in brain-computer interfacing. Prof James has over 150 papers in neural engineering in varied biomedical engineering journals and refereed conferences.
He is currently Chair of the IEEE UK & Republic of Ireland (UKRI) EMBS Chapter; member of IEEE EMBS ADCOM as Europe Representative, Chair of the IEEE UKRI Section Executive committee (2010-2012) and past Chair of the Executive Committee of the IET Healthcare Technology Network. Professor James is Series Editor for the Biomedical Signals and Systems book series of Artech House Publishers; Editor in Chief of the Open Medical Informatics Journal and sits on the editorial advisory board of the IEEE Spectrum magazine. He is Associate Editor of the IEEE EMBS Conference Editorial Board (Neural Engineering Theme) and he has been actively involved in many EMBS committees – mainly on student activities. He has instigated and organises the PGBIOMED series of biomedical engineering student conferences which have taken place from 2003 to date.

Professor and Chair of Nonlinear Dynamics, Institute for Physics, University of Potsdam, DE

Jürgen Kurths is Professor of Nonlinear Dynamics and Theoretical Physics in the Department of Physics of Potsdam University in Germany. He has studied Mathematics in the University of Rostock and he received his PhD from Academy of Science in Berlin and the habilitation from the University in Rostock. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society. His research interests focused in Nonlinear Dynamics and its applications is specialized on: a) complex synchronization phenomena, b) nonlinear time series analysis, c) modeling of nonlinear systems and d) applications in physiology and earth schience. He has strong cooperation with research centers and university institutes in Brazil, China, India, Israel, USA and Europa and he is reviewer in various international journals and board member of CHAOS, Int. J. Bifurcation&Chaos, Springer Series on Synergetics etc. He is auhtor of one book and of more than 200 scientific publications in refereed journals.

Professor at the Department of Artificial Intelligence at the Polytechnic University of Madrid.

Dr. Pedro Larrañaga received his diploma (Mathematics) degree in 1981 from University of Valladolid, Spain, and a PhD in Computer Science in 1995 from University of the Basque Country, Spain, where he obtained an associate professor level in 1998 and a full professor level in 2004. In 2007 he joined the Technical University of Madrid as full professor at the Department of Artificial Intelligence where he leads the Computational Intelligence group.
His research interests are in the fields of probabilistic graphical models and heuristic optimization. In both fields he has proposed methodological advances and successful applications in industry, computer science and biomedicine.
He has coauthored two edited books on estimation of distribution algorithms, as well as more than 300 scientific papers in different areas. He has participated in more than 70 research projects at national, European and international levels. Since 2007 he is the expert manager of computer technology area of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.

Director of the Dept. "Physiology of Cognitive Processes" at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics (MPIK), in Tübingen, DE

Nikos K. Logothetis is director of the department "Physiology of Cognitive Processes" at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics (MPIK), in Tübingen, Germany. He received a B.S. in mathematics from the University of Athens, a B.S. in biology from the University of Thessaloniki, and his Ph.D. in human neurobiology from the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich. In 1985 he moved to the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department of M.I.T., where he initially worked as a postdoctoral fellow and later as Research Scientist. In 1990 he joined the faculty of the Division of Neuroscience at the Baylor College of Medicine. Seven years later he moved to the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics to continue his work on the physiological mechanisms underlying visual perception and object recognition.

Professor, Escuela Universitaria de Óptica, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Prof Fivos Panetsos is the Director of the Neurocomputing and Neurorobotics Research Group of the Complutense University of Madrid. He is also with the Biomathematics Department of the same University since 1999 as well as with the Minimally Invasive Surgery Center of Caceres, Spain. He obtained a degree in Applied Mathematics from the Univ. of Pavia, Italy, a PhD in Biomathematics from the Faculty of Biology, Complutense Univ. of Madrid, Spain and a PhD in Neuroscience from the Faculty of Medicine, Autonomous Univ. of Madrid, Spain. He was working at the Joint Research Centre of Ispra (JRC) and in various Universities in Spain. Founder and Director of the Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence of the Univ. Carlos III of Madrid, 1991-1995. Founder and director of the Laboratory of Computational Neuroscience and of the Neurocomputing and Neurorobotics Research Group of the Complutense Univ. of Madrid 1999-actualy. His research interests are in the fields of neurorobotics, modeling of the nervous system, oscillatory activity and plasticity of the brain in electrophysiology, neuro-roboticas and brain-machin interfaces. Long experience in RTD project management, responsible for 44 R&D National and International projects the majority as Project leader. Prof Panetsos is leading the NeuroEngineering section.

Distinguished Professor Director, Center for Applied Optimization, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Florida

Dr. Panos Pardalos is Distinguished Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Florida. He is also affiliated faculty member of the Computer Science Department, the Hellenic Studies Center, the McKnight Brain Institute, and the Biomedical Engineering Department. He is also the director of the Center for Applied Optimization. Dr. Pardalos obtained a PhD degree from the University of Minnesota in Computer and Information Sciences. He has held visiting appointments at Princeton University, DIMACS Center, Institute of Mathematics and Applications, FIELDS Institute, AT&T Labs Research, Trier University, Linkoping Institute of Technology, and Universities in Greece. He has received numerous awards including, University of Florida Research Foundation Professor, UF Doctoral Dissertation Advisor/Mentoring Award, Foreign Member of the Royal Academy of Doctors (Spain), Foreign Member Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, Foreign Member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Foreign Member of the Petrovskaya Academy of Sciences and Arts (Russia), and Honorary Member of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences. Dr. Pardalos received the degrees of Honorary Doctor from Lobachevski University (Russia) and the V.M. Glushkov Institute of Cybernetics (Ukraine), he is a fellow of AAAS, a fellow of INFORMS, and in 2001 he was awarded the Greek National Award and Gold Medal for Operations Research. Dr. Pardalos is a world leading expert in global and combinatorial optimization and he is the President of the International Society of Global Optimization. He is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Global Optimization, Journal of Optimization Letters, Computational Management Science, and Energy Systems. In addition, he is the managing editor of several book series, and a member of the editorial board of several international journals. He is the author of 8 books and the editor of several books. He has written numerous articles and developed several well known software packages. His research has been supported by NSF, NIH, DTRA, and other government organizations. His recent research interests include network design problems, optimization and data mining in biomedicine, and massive computing. Dr. Pardalos has been an invited lecturer at many universities and research institutes around the world. He has also organized several international conferences.

Professor of Physics, Department of Physics, University of Zagreb, Croatia

Selma Supek is Assistant Professor at the Department of Physics where she lectures on biophysics, functional brain imaging methods and neurodynamics within diploma and doctoral programs. She received undergraduate diploma, M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in physics at the University of Zagreb. Her doctoral research, however, was done at the Biophysics Group, Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she started research in the area of functional brain imaging. After her return to Zagreb she continued MEG research in collaboration with USA and EU laboratories (LANL; MIND Research Network; UNM; BioMag Laboratory, Helsinki; MEG laboratories from the University of Heidelberg and Jena) and mentored over 20 undergraduate and doctoral physics students. Her research interests include neuromagnetic studies of retinotopic and functional organization of the human cortex, spatio-temporal resolution of MEG, sensory and cognitive neurodynamics, emotional face processing, neurodynamic markers of neurodegenerative processing. She organized international meetings NFSI-99 (www.brain.hr), Biomag2010 (www.biomag2010.org), COST NeuroMath 2010, and founded and co-directed international series of intensive graduate courses Mind and Brain. She co-organized and, from 2003 till the end of 2004, co-directed the first University interdisciplinary postgraduate study “Language Communication and Cognitive Neuroscience” at the University of Zagreb and was a member of its Coordination committee. She is members of 10 international and national scientific societies.

The JHU Biomedical Instrumentation LabSchool of Medicine Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, US

Nitish V. Thakor received B.Tech. degree in electrical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, in 1974 and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1981. He served on the faculty of electrical engineering and of computer science of Northwestern University, Illinois, between 1981 and 1983. Since then, he has been with the Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine, where he is currently serving as a professor of biomedical engineering. He teaches and conducts research on cardiovascular and neurological instrumentation, biomedical signal processing, and microand nanotechnologies. He has authored more than 160 peer-reviewed publications on these subjects. He serves on the editorial boards of several journals and has been appointed as the incoming editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Neural and Rehabilitation Engineering. He directs the laboratory for neuroengineering at the Johns Hopkins University with the aim of carrying out interdisciplinary and collaborative engineering research for basic and clinical neurosciences. He also directs a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-supported training grant in the field of neuroengineering. He is actively interested in developing international scientific programs, collaborative exchanges, tutorials, and workshops on neuroengineering and medical microsystems. 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, a Fellow of the IEEE, and a founding fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society. He is also a recipient of the Centennial Medal from the University of Wisconsin School of Engineering, Honorary Membership from Alpha Eta Mu Beta Biomedical Engineering student honor society, and a Distinguished Service Award from IIT Bombay, India.

Institute of Electronics, Medical Electronics Division, Technical University of Lodz, Poland

Marcin Byczuk received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electronic engineering from the Faculty of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Technical University of Lodz (TUL), Poland, in 2002 and 2007, respectively. He is currently an Assistant Professor at TUL. His research and teaching interests include digital systems, mixed-signal systems, real-time systems, digital signal processing, low level programming and code optimization. Marcin Byczuk is the author of a novel method of alternate half-field stimulation. His current work concentrates on SSVEPbased brain-computer interface design, especially on visual stimulation techniques, human vision and mobile systems for EEG measurement and processing.

Guger Technologies OG, Graz, Austria

Gunther Krausz is an engineer for telecommunication and electronics and a neuropsychologist. He received his degree in psychology in 1999 with a thesis on automatic artifact correction in the EEG for biofeedback/neurofeefback applications. Then 4 years of research work followed at the Graz University of Technology at the biomedical engineering institute, department of medical informatics, Prof. Gert Pfurtscheller. The main fields of research have been basic research on motor activity and EEG as well as BCI (Brain-Computer Interface) technology. Some special topics have been induced beta oscillations after tactile stimulation of fingers, lower and upper mu-rhythm activity during self-paced movements and information transfer in a high-speed motor-imagery based Brain Computer Interface. Krausz also gave lectures in experimental psychology at the Karl-Franzens University in Graz. In 2003 he joined g.tec - GUGER TECHNOLOGIES where he works in research & development and international marketing.

Guger Technologies OG, Graz, Austria

g.tec is a manufacturing company in the field of biomedical engineering with two branches in Austria. The main product field encompasses systems for biosignal processing and analysis under MATLAB and Simulink. The systems can be used for the analysis of brain (EEG), heart (ECG), muscle (EMG), ..., activity and contain devices for the acquisition, visualization and analysis of biosignals. Furthermore scientifically established real-time, online and offline-analysis modules are provided. The flexible configuration of the devices provides an environment which can be used for many applications and can be easily customized and expanded. Application areas are neurology, psychology, physiology, sport medicine, BCI, etc. g.tec, which was founded by Christoph Guger and Günter Edlinger in 1999 as a spin-off from the Graz University of Technology, sells its award-winning technology to companies, universities and research institutes in 55 countries.

Materials for the courses will be made available for download here.