Event Chairs

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-UNL / FCT - New University of Lisbon Portugal http://www.plux.info

Brief Bio
Hugo Gamboa founded Plux in 2007 together with 4 other partners and has grown the company from an individual research project to product medical device company with growing international sales and research seeking second round of financing.
PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico, Technical University of Lisbon. His thesis entitled "Multi-Modal Behavioral Biometrics Based on HCI and Electrophysiology" presents new behavioral biometrics modalities which are an important contribute for the state-of-the-art in the field.). From 2000 to 2007 he was a Professor at Escola Superio r de Tecnologia de Setúbal, where he taught in the field of Artificial Intelligence. In recognition of his work by the European Biometric Forum, he was among the three finalists of the EBF Biometric Research Award 2007. In 2008 he was the winner of the Portuguese National Award “Futuras Promessas” ISA/Millennium BCP, granted to the best PhD thesis on Physics, Electronics, Informatics or Biomedical Engineering fields. ... More >>

Dirk Elias University of Porto / Fraunhofer Portugal

Brief Bio
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dirk Christian Elias, born in 1966, is currently the president of the executive board of Fraunhofer Portugal (FhP), the director of the Fraunhofer research center for 'Assistive Information and Communication Solutions' (FhP-AICOS) and from May 2008 on invited full professor at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP). From February 2013 on Dirk is also a member of the Scientific Board (Conselho Científico) of FEUP.
He left the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in 1992 as Diplom-Ingenieur for
electrical engineering and joined the research institute for Open Communic ation
Systems in Berlin (GMD FOKUS, now Fraunhofer FOKUS).
Between 1992 an 1996 his work focused on multifunctional end systems with direct access to ATM-networks (Asynchronous Transfer Mode).
He received his doctor degree from the Technical University of Berlin (TUB) in computer sciences in 1996.
As deputy director of the FOKUS competence center for advanced technologies and systems between 1996 and 2000 he led the laboratory for Home and Office Technologies (HOT), which has been used as a demonstrator and test bed for many smart home activities of Deutsche Telekom Berkom.
During 1992 and 2000 he participated in various national and international
projects for GMD/FhG, Deutsche Telekom, Siemens, Eurescom, and EU.
In 2000 he left GMD/FhG and started IVISTAR AG. IVISTAR was focused on IP-based multi-play products for the organization of open offices and provided later also product development services to Deutsche Telekom and T-Systems for the residential market.
He worked at IVISTAR eight years as CEO and after leaving to Portugal in 2008 one year as chairman of the supervisory board before the company was sold to an Austrian investor. In Portugal Dirk started setting up the Fraunhofer Portugal Research center AICOS from scratch that currently is operating with a team of approximately 85 persons and will grow during 2014 to a size of approximately 100 people. AICOS, being dedicated to applied research for industry, is focusing on solutions for Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) and ICT for socio-economic development (ICT4D). The center was growing its external project revenues by more than 50% in 2013. Dirk currently is a member of the advisory board of EnergyIN, the Portuguese energy cluster (Pólo de Competitividade e Tecnologia da Energia) and consulted the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ Themenkreis IKT) as well as the headquarters of Fraunhofer Gesellschaft with regards to strategies related to innovation activities in developing countries between 2011-2012. He is the initiator of the FhP-AICOS competence center for ICT4D (ICT4D-CC) that started in 2013. The ICT4D-CC currently operates projects in collaboration with partners from Mozambique, South Africa, Ghana, Liberia, Cameroon and Tanzania. In October 2012 Dirk received the 'Galileo Master 2012' award in the European Satellite Navigation Competition for his work on indoor positioning based on modulated magnetic fields. Precise indoor positioning for mobile phones currently is the main focus of his scientific work and resulted in three patent filings to date. ... More >>

Mário Forjaz Secca CEFITEC, Departamento de Fisica, FCT/UNL Portugal

Brief Bio
Mario Forjaz Secca is Associate Professor of Biophysics at the Department of Physics of Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal. He was the proponent and creator of the Biomedical Engineering Masters program at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, and has been its coordinator since the beginning, apart from the academic year of 2008/2009 (on sabbatical). He has been working as an imaging Medical Physicist in a private MRI clinic, Ressonancia Magnetica de Caselas, since 1988, and in a public hospital, Hospital Garcia D’Orta, since December 2008. His research interests are mainly in Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Medi cine, with some interest in Biomechanics as well. The main topics he has been involved with are: functional MRI, simultaneous acquisition of EEG and fMRI, MRI flow measurements, diffusion weighted imaging, quantitative measurements, Diffusion Tensor Imaging, Susceptibility Weighted Imaging, with particular emphasis in neurological diseases like Epilepsy, Alzheimer and Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus, and with emphasis on muscle and joint imaging to model the biomechanics of movement and fatigue in high level athletes. As part of his biomechanics work, together with one of his PhD student and an MSc student, a national and an european patent have been registered for a mechanical instrument to measure the positions of all the spinal column in a standing position. He is a member of ISMRM since 1994, a member of ESMRMB since 1998 and a member of the Portuguese Society of Neuroradiology since 2002. He has been the President of the Portuguese Society of Biomedical Engineering since 2006, and Secretary of the Portuguese Biomechanical Society since 2007. He is heavily involved with IFMBE (International Federation of Biological and Medical Engineering) being the Chair of the Secretaries Committee from 2008 to 2012, the Chair of the Working Group on Developing Countries since 2010 and on 2012 he was elected member of the Administrative Council for a 6 year period. ... More >>

Jan Schier The Institute of Information Theory and Automation of the Czech Academy of Sciences Czech Republic

Brief Bio
Jan Schier obtained his MSc degree in electrical engineering in 1989 and Ph.D. in 1995 mathematical engineering, both from Czech Technical University. Since the beginning of his Ph.D. studies, he has been with the Institute of Information Theory and Automation, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague. He has started his research career in the field of parallel implementations of the signal processing algorithms.

Between 1995-2002 he has been on several long-term stays with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at TU Delft, the Netherlands and with the SISTA group of the Department of Electrica l Engineering, KU Leuven, Belgium, in both cases working in the field of applied signal processing.

An informal cooperation with the Yeast Colony Group at the Faculty of Sciences, Charles University, which started round 2009, started his interest in image processing for microsocopy and bioimaging, which eventually led him to join the Image Processing group of UTIA in October 2011. The paper on Colony Counting Tool has been awarded the Best Paper Award at the BIOSTEC/BIOINFORMATICS conference in 2011. His current interests cover mainly image denoising and segmentation methods for bioimaging and microscopy imaging, as well as - on the practical side - Java programming for ImageJ. He is mainly involved in projects of applied research and implementation projects: recent examples include evaluation of Langerhans Islets (in close cooperation with Czech Technical University and Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine) and evaluation of breast ultrasound examinations (Technology Agency of the Czech Republic project TA04011392 "Early ultrasound detection of breast cancer").

Dr. Schier has served as the program co-chair for the BIOSTEC/BIOIMAGING conference in 2014 and 2015. ... More >>