Neural engineering is an emerging discipline that combines multiple engineering disciplines, including electronic and photonic technologies, computer science, physics, chemistry, mathematics with cellular, molecular, cognitive and behavioral neuroscience to understand the organizational principles and underlying mechanisms of the biology of neural systems and the behavioral dynamics and complexity of neural systems in nature. To highlight this emerging discipline, the 6th International IEEE EMBS Conference on Neural Engineering will be held in San Diego, CA from November 3 through November 6, 2013.
Intellectual Merits: The objective of this conference is to highlight progress in Neural and Cognitive Engineering, an emerging field bridging molecular, cellular, systems, cognitive and behavioral neuroscience with engineering, physics, chemistry, mathematics and computer science. We strongly believe that the neural engineering conference further stimulates neural engineering research and education among neuroscientists, chemists, engineers, computer scientists and mathematicians.
Broader Impact: In addition to the keynote, plenary, platform and poster sessions, we will also have a panel to focus on the challenges of making a career in the rapidly growing, interdisciplinary fields of neural engineering, from being hired as part of a team and finding exciting new research opportunities, to becoming a team leader and what to look for when organizing that team and choosing its members. Options will be discussed for graduate studies and research both internationally and within the U.S., as well as the potential for collaboration among researchers and students internationally.
The 6th International IEEE EMBS Conference on Neural Engineering, partially sponsored by the NSF, was held on Nov 3-6, 2013, San Diego, CA. . The main objective of the Conference was to highlight the recent advances in wearable and implantable neural sensors/probes and computational neural science and engineering. The papers submitted for the conference were carefully reviewed and are of the highest quality. They reflected the scope of this emerging field in areas such as neural prostheses, nano neuro-implants, neuro-robotics, cognitive engineering, neural signal and image processing and modeling, and brain computer interface from hardware to experimentation. The three plenary talks were presented by internationally respected neural and cognitive engineers and scientists at the 6th International IEEE EMBS Neural Engineering Conference. Additionally, the five special symposiums, including 1) Neural Computation and Modeling, 2) Brain Machine Interface, 3) Neural Control and Modulation, 4) Neural Robotics and Rehabilitation and 5) NeuroImaging and Informatics were organized by the experts in these research areas. The technical program also had more than 579 poster presentations (www.ne2013.embs.org) Finally, the technical program had two forums to focus on the Translational Neural Engineering and the Funding and Future Challenges in Neural Engineering. Options were discussed for graduate studies and research internationally, as well as within the US, and for collaboration among researchers and students internationally. The NSF partially sponsored travel expenses of 10 graduate students from the US Institutes to attend and present their papers at the 6th International IEEE EMBS Neural Engineering Conference. We strongly believe that this Neural Engineering conference further stimulated interdisciplinary research and collaborations among engineers, mathematicians, computer scientists, biologists, and medical researchers, and helped identify new, challenging directions in the Biomedical Engineering and Science. We will continue having the Neural Engineering Conference and encourage undergraduate students, graduate students and post-docs to apply for the fellowships for the next Neural Engineering.
