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Welcome

By Michael Neuman

Welcome to the October 2014 issue of the IEEE Life Sciences Newsletter. By way introduction, I am Michael Neuman, the newly appointed Editor in Chief of the Newsletter. I am a professor of Biomedical Engineering at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, in Michigan’s beautiful Upper Peninsula. I also am involved in health care leadership as the Chair of the Board of Trustees at our local hospital, Portage Hospital LLC.

First of all I wish to extend hearty thanks to my predecessor, Nitish Thakor, who has served since the inception of this Newsletter in 2012. His excellent work with the Newsletter and his broad understanding of life sciences and biomedical engineering has made his founding term as editor a difficult act to follow.

I have been a member of the IEEE since its inception more than 50 years ago and have previously edited two of its publications, the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering from 1989 – 1996 and IEEE Pulse from 2008 – 2013. Editing a newsletter is a different proposition. Here we want to be brief (with the exception of this article!) and provide summaries of important developments in the life sciences with, in many cases, links to more extensive information. Although in some examples newsletters evolve to become more extensive publications themselves, I want to keep this a newsletter. There are already many publications within the IEEE and without that cover the life sciences but not many overview IEEE life science reports such as this Newsletter. You, dear reader, can help to keep this newsletter brief and relevant. We will welcome contributions from you of just a few paragraphs or suggestions of topics we can track down for both this Newsletter and the Life Science Portal.

In this issue of the newsletter, we present an interview with Donna Hudson, who is the Chair of the LSTC Steering Committee. We follow up with a reposting of a recent IEEE Pulse article where Donna describes the nature of the LSTC and gives some information on each of the six Founding Societies.

The formation of the LSTC is an important milestone in bringing together IEEE Societies with technical interests that intersect the fields of engineering and life sciences. We will be sharing overviews of life science-related activities in our various member societies in this and subsequent issues of this Newsletter. The IEEE Society with the greatest activity in the life sciences is the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS). Bruce Wheeler, the president of the EMBS, has prepared an overview of these activities for this issue. The Communications Society is also active in the life sciences, and Hsi-Pin Ma, Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues, and Nazim Agoulmine from that Society have also summarized their activities. In subsequent issues will feature similar pieces from our other founding societies.

I look forward to my activities with the LSTC and this newsletter and I will welcome receiving feedback and suggestions from our readers.


Contributor

Michael R. NeumanMichael R. Neuman is Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Michigan Technological University. He received the PhD in electrical engineering in 1966 from Case Institute of Technology and the MD from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in 1974. His research interests are Biomedical sensors and instrumentation, Physiological measurements and perinatal medicine, Clinical applications of biomedical instrumentation, and Microfabrication technology. Read more

About the Newsletter

The IEEE Life Sciences Newsletter is a new initiative to bring forth interesting articles and informative interviews within the exciting field of life sciences every month. Please subscribe to the Newsletter to receive notification each month when new articles are published.

October 2014 Contributors

Michael R. NeumanMichael R. Neuman is Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Michigan Technological University. He received the PhD in electrical engineering in 1966 from Case Institute of Technology and the MD from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in 1974. His research interests are Biomedical sensors and instrumentation, Physiological measurements and perinatal medicine, Clinical applications of biomedical instrumentation, and Microfabrication technology. Read more

Donna HudsonDonna Hudson received her Ph.D. from UCLA School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (1981) and has been on the Faculty of University of California since then. She is currently Director of Academic Research and Technology at University of California, San Francisco, Professor of Clinical and Translational Informatics (UCSF) and Professor, Joint Graduate Group in Bioengineering at UC Berkeley/UCSF. She is an IEEE Fellow and Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. Read more

Hsi-Pin MaHsi-Pin Ma is an Associate Professor of Department of Electrical Engineering at National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. He received his Ph. D. from National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. His research interests include communications system design and SoC implementation, power efficient/energy efficient signal processing, and biomedical signal processing and system applications. Read more

Joel Josè P. C. RodriguesJoel Josè P. C. Rodrigues (S'01, M'06, SM'06) is a professor in the Department of Informatics of the University of Beira Interior, Covilhã, Portugal, and researcher at the Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal. He received a PhD degree in informatics engineering from the University of Beira Interior. His main research interests include sensor networks, e-health, e-learning, vehicular delay-tolerant networks, and mobile and ubiquitous computing. Read more

Nazim AgoulmineNazim Agoulmine University of Èvry Val d'Essonne, France is a full professor at the University of Evry, France, and a WCU distinguished visiting professor at POSTECH, Korea. He is leading a research group on networking and multimedia systems (IBISC Laboratory) and is an area editor of International Journal on Computer Networks. He is a coauthor of three books in network architectures and management and a book on autonomic networks. His research interests include wired and wireless network management and control, autonomic networks, and sensor networks. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE. Read more

Bruce C. WheelerBruce C. Wheeler, Ph.D. is Professor of Biomedical Engineering, BME Dept., University of Florida and the President of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. He received the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Cornell University in 1981. Prof. Wheeler's research interests lie in the application of electrical engineering methodologies to neuroscience. Read more