Position: Associate Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto | Senior Researcher and Centre Coordinator at the INESC-TEC
Expertise Topics: Signal Processing, Wearable Sensors, Neuroengineering and Telemedicine
Talk: Bioengineering approaches to movement impairment neurological diseases.

Many neurological diseases produce movement impairment that is central to the diagnosis. Nevertheless, physicians usually do not quantify these clinical manifestations and still rely on qualitative observation. In the present talk João Paulo will drive through the a line of research BRAIN’ve been following for +20y to design and implement Bioengineering approaches to movement quantification in neurological diseases, using an “arsenal” of technologies and will show translational results of some of the resulting bioengineering systems developed.

Biography:

João Paulo Cunha is Associate Professor (with “Agregação”) at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP), Portugal and senior researcher at the INESC-TEC: Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering where he created and coordinates the BRAIN – Biomedical Research And INnovation – research group and co-founded the Center for Biomedical Engineering Research (C-BER) that aggregates ~30 researchers. Prof. Cunha is also affiliated with the Portuguese Brain Imaging Network that he co-founded and co-directed between 2009 and 2012, the Porto Biomechanics Laboratory and is visiting professor at the Neurology Dep., Faculty of Medicine of the University of Munich, Munich, Bavaria, Germany, since 2002 and at the Carnegie Mellon – Silicon Valley Campus, NASA Ames Research Park, Mountain View, CA, USA since August 2016. He served as Scientific Director of the Carnegie-Mellon | Portugal program where he is a faculty since 2007 from 2014-2018, and as the coordinator of the Center of Competencies for the Future Cities of UP since 2015. Recently, he was re-nominated Scientific Director of the Carnegie-Mellon | Portugal program for the period of 2019-2023.

He earned a degree in Electronics and Telecommunications engineering (1989), a Ph.D. (1996) and an “Agregação” degree (2009) in Electrical Engineering all at the University of Aveiro, Portugal.

João Paulo Cunha is Senior Member of the IEEE (2004) where he joined the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) in 1986 as a student member. He acted as reviewer of several IEEE journals, such as the IEEE Reviews in BME, IEEE Trans. on Biomedical Eng., IEEE Trans. on Medical Imaging or the IEEE Trans. on Information Technology in Biomedicine and other relevant scientific journals such as PLoS ONE or Movement Disorders. He co-founded and contributed to several startups by licensing intellectual property of innovative biomedical technology developed for several years in his lab, advising and, in some cases, also as an investor. João Paulo Cunha is co-author of more than 250 scientific publications and 4 patents, holding an h-index of 21 (Google Scholar), with +1900 citations.

Position: Principal Investigator at I3Bs – Research Institute on Biomaterials, Biodegradables and Biomimetics of University of Minho, ICVS/3B’s Laboratório Associado | Associate Editor of Journal of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine (Wiley-Blackwell)
Expertise Topics: Skin Tissue Engineering, Bone Tissue Engineering, Vascularization and Stem cells differentiation and In vitro 3D models
Talk: Skin Tissue Engineering: present and future.

Biography:

Alexandra P. Marques has a PhD on Materials Science and Technology – Biomaterials from the University of Minho, Portugal and in cooperation with the University of Liverpool, UK, and a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Porto, Portugal. She is a Founder, Deputy-Director and Principal Investigator of the 3B’s Research Group, University of Minho, Portugal. She is also Member of the Governing Board of the PT Government Associate Laboratory ICVS/3B´s. From January 2017 she is Associate Editor of the Journal of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine (TERM), John Wiley & Sons – Blackwell, launched in 2007, of which was also Assistant Editor (2009-2016).

She is member of several International Scientific Organizations and has been actively participating in the activities of the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS), European Wound management Association (Elected Council Member from July 2018) and the Portuguese Society for Stem Cells and Cellular Therapy (SPCE-TC, founder member and coordinator of the Section Cell Therapies and Tissue Engineering -2011/2012). She was part of the organizing committee of several International meetings, including the 2008 TERMIS-EU meeting held in Porto, and has been member of the scientific committee and of the International Advisory Board of many others conferences (TERMIS, ESB, ESBP, NATO/ASI).

After receiving Starting and Development Career Grants from the Portuguese Science Foundation, she was also awarded a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC-2016-COG). This adds to the different National and International projects in which she was core member (FP6 EXPERTISSUES Network of Excellence, ERC AdG ComplexiTE, M-ERA.NET Bioterface) or that she has been coordinating such as those approved under the actions M-ERA.NET 2016 and H2020-TWINN-2015.

She edited 2 books, the Skin tissue models book, Elsevier (2017) and the Handbook Natural-based Polymers for Biomedical Applications, Woodhead Pub (2008), and is author of 97 peer-reviewed publications, 18 book chapters, 91 Indexed conference abstracts and proceedings and more than 200 communications in major conferences of the field. She is co-inventor of 13 patents (5 families). She has an h-factor of 29 and was cited more than 2980 times, 2844 without self-citations (October 2018, ISI Web of Knowledge).

Position: Full Professor in the Department of Mechanics of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto | Senior Researcher INEGI
Expertise Topics: Biomechanics, Simulation, Materials Engineering and Structural Engineering
Talk: The colors of biomechanics.

Biography:

Full Professor at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto (FEUP); Mechanical Engineer from the University of Porto, 1987; MSc from the University of Porto, 1991; PhD from the University of Porto, 1999.

Between 2007 and 2011 was the Director of the “Structural Integrity Unit” research group of the Institute of Mechanical Engineering at FEUP (IDMEC – a R & D non-profit, private Research Institute). Member of the executive board of IDMEC-FEUP. Responsible for the Supervision or Co-supervision of twelve PhD students.

Co-chair of the following conferences: CompIMAGE; 14th International Product Development Management; VIPIMAGE; Fourteenth Annual Scientific Conference on WEB Technology, New Media, Communications and Telematics Theory, Methods, Tools and Applications; VIPIMAGE 2009; CompIMAGE 2010; Biodental; iDEMi’09; 6th International Conference on Technology and Medical Sciences, CIBEM 2011, VIPIMAGE 2011; among other mini-symposia within conferences.

Founder and Editor of the International Journal for Computational Vision and Biomechanics. Guest editor of several scientific journals. Principal Investigator for several national and European scientific projects. Co-author of more than 90 papers in international journals and more than 300 publications in international conferences.

Position: Full Professor in the Department of Bioengineering of “Instituto Superior Técnico” | Senior Researcher and Co-Group Leader of INESC-MN
Expertise Topics: Nanobiotechnology, Polymers & Microfluidics, Thin Films, Nanofabrication and Microelectromechanical Systems
Talk: Lab-on-chip platforms for chemical and biological analysis.

Biography:

João Pedro Conde received his Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University in 1989. His thesis topic involved the study of the optoelectronic properties of amorphous silicon-silicon germanium multilayers. Between 1989 and 1990 he was an IBM post-doctoral fellow at Yorktown Heights, where he developed a low temperature process for the deposition of amorphous silicon for which a patent was awarded. Since 1990 he has been at the Instituto Superior Tecnico where he is presently a full professor in the Department of Bioengineering. He is a co-responsible for the Thin Film MEMS and BioMEMS research group of INESC Microsystems and Nanotechnologies.

Position: Guest Adjunt Professor at “Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal” (IPS) | Chief Innovation Officer at PLUX | Researcher at “Instituto de Telecomunicações” (IT)
Expertise Topics: Instrumentation, Signal Processing, Pattern Recognition, Wearable Sensors and Systems
Talk: BITalino: What’s Next?

Physiological data has had a transforming role on multiple aspects of society, which goes beyond the health sciences domains to which they were traditionally associated with. While biomedical engineering is a classical discipline where the topic is amply covered, today physiological data is a matter of interest for students, researchers and hobbyists in areas ranging from arts, programming, engineering, among others. Regardless of the context, the use physiological in experimental activities and practical projects is heavily bounded by the cost and limited access to adequate support materials.

BITalino has been revolutionising biomedical education and prototyping, by providing versatile toolkits composed of low-cost hardware and software, and created to enable anyone to create cool projects and applications involving physiological data. The hardware consists of modular wireless biosignal acquisition systems that can be used to acquire data in real time, interface with other devices (e.g. Arduino or Raspberry PI), or perform rapid prototyping of end-user applications. The software comprehends a set of programming APIs, a biosignal processing toolbox, and a framework for real time data acquisition and post processing. In this talk Hugo will review how BITalino came to be and the future prospects.

Biography:

Hugo completed his PhD and MSc degrees in Electrical and Computers Engineering from the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), University of Lisbon (UL), and his BSc in Industrial Informatics from the Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal (IPS). Since 2004, Hugo is a researcher at the IT – Instituto de Telecomunicações. In 2012 he was a visiting researcher at the Computational and NeuroEgineering Labority (CNEL) from the University of Florida. He is also one of the co-founders of PLUX – Wireless Biosignals, S.A., established in 2007 as an innovative technology-based company operating in the field of medical devices for healthcare and quality of life, where Hugo is currently a Board Member and Innovation Advisor. More recently, he has been actively working (i.e. having fun) towards making the world a bit more physiological, through BITalino, an open source software and low-cost hardware toolkit, that allows anyone from students to professional app developers, to create cool projects and applications with physiological sensors.

His work has been distinguished with several academic and technical awards such as the “alumniIPS” career award, the “Most Innovative Technology” award at the MIT Portugal E3 Forum, the selection as a semi-finalist to the Engadget Expand NY Insert Coin competition in 2013, and the “Caixa Geral de Depósitos Award” from 2003 to 2005 for recognized academic merit. Hugo is an IEEE Member since 2010, affiliated with the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, and an active member of the IEEE EMBS Portugal Chapter.

Position: Group Leader and Principal Investigator at INEB – I3S
Expertise Topics: Neurosciences, Neuroengineering, Mathematical Modelling, Biophysics and Bioimaging
Talk: Chatting with neurons: novel approaches to analyze function and communication in neuronal cultures using a combination of microfluidics and microelectrode arrays.

Understanding how neuronal cells encode and transmit information is a key element in neuroscience. In this talk Paulo will present a new system developed in his group that allows the identification and characterization of the propagation of action potentials in neuronal circuits. The new system, name microEF, combines microelectrode arrays with microfluidics and advanced computational tools.

Biography:

Paulo de Castro Aguiar graduated in Physics (“Engª Física Tecnológica”) from Instituto Superior Técnico, U. of Lisbon, Portugal, and completed his PhD in Computational Neuroscience from the Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation, U. of Edinburgh, UK, in 2006. Between 2006 and 2008 he worked as a postdoc at the Institute for Molecular and Cellular Biology (IBMC), Portugal, in the Neuroscience Research Unit. In 2008 he was awarded an “FCT Ciência” position (“Inv Auxiliar”) and became Lecturer in Biomathematics at the Center for Mathematics of U of Porto (CMUP), Portugal. In 2014 he then joined the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (INEB), Portugal, as Assistant Researcher (Inv Auxiliar). To add to this multidisciplinary path, since 2014 he is also Affiliate Professor (“Professor Afiliado”) in Biophysics in the Faculty of Medicine of University of Porto.

Presently he is a Principal Investigator at INEB/i3S, holds an IF Position (Inv. FCT, DevG), and is leader of the recently formed (2017) research group “Neuroengineering and Computational Neuroscience”. His group is focused on understanding how neuronal circuits are capable of transmitting, processing and storing information. The team combines electrophysiology with computational models and neuroengineering tool (such as novel interfaces between neurons and electronics) to reveal and repair neural function. Paulo de Castro Aguiar is author in +50 international peer-reviewed publications and is the core developer of several scientific (open-source) software such as OpenControl, NeuralSyns and Py3DN (collectively with +12,000 registered downloads).