The international Workshop of """"""""Life Science and Systems and Applications (LiSSA)"""""""" is co-sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the National Institutes of Health Nano Task Force. LISSA provides an excellent forum where engineers can seek critical issues requiring sophisticated engineering techniques and scientists can find potential engineering collaborators. LiSSA involves the IEEE as a whole, in particular five societies participated. Signal Processing Society (SPS), Photonics Society (LEOS), Electron Device Society (EDS) and Circuits and Systems Society (CASS). The challenges to merge different areas are still great. Closer interactions between groups can be encouraged in particular the convergence of the community of Circuits and Systems and life sciences are therefore proposed. A number of companies doing medical instrumentation and top researchers in hospital and academia have already indicated their willingness to actively jointly participate in identifying new solutions. Tackling these problems involves, among others, biomedical and environmental sensors, wireless implantable and wearable electrical neural recording, electronic interface to the nervous systems, and also ultralow power biopotential microsystems. One particular group that can jump these hurdles is the circuits and systems together along with the aid of the life sciences systems. This convergence will also address roadblocks in the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research to research and transform how biomedical studies are carried-out in overcoming specific obstacles or filling defined knowledge gaps. In this case the gaps between the circuits and systems community and life sciences. One key issue to be addressed is to explore how the environment influences both the development and progression of human disease. Thus, the purpose of this proposal is to solicit partial funding for this initiative with IEEE/NIEHS Circuits and Systems for Medical and Environmental Applications which is a spinoff of LISSA. The main purpose is to provide a forum to change industrial, academic and research institutes culture to foster collaboration. Efforts are concentrated on identifying critical areas for research and collaboration between circuits and systems community and environmental health sciences. Objectives of the workshop are to: 1. encourage high-risk/high-reward research by providing an environment that encourages interaction and exchange of ideas among environmental health sciences and circuits and systems communities. 2. offer a number of keynote speakers, in specific areas of interest to the two communities mentioned above, to address open problems. This will be followed by round table with four invited participants with a moderator to discuss potential stumbling blocks or problems associated with specific topic areas. 3. encourage specialized invited sessions dealing with topical problems that promote potential interactions and cooperation among groups. A document with conclusions from these round tables will be generated. 4. Disseminate materials presented in the Workshop as well as the documents with conclusions from the daily round tables. 5. Encourage international participation from USA, Europe, Asia and Latin-America. This should also include minority and undergraduate participation.
The aims of this proposed workshop are to nurture a suitable atmosphere yielding collaboration among environmental medical sciences and circuits and systems engineers to come with problems that can be uniquely solved by these communities. The committees involve researchers from both discipline areas and with significant experience/expertise.
