Mini Symposia

Non-invasive neuromodulation technologies to augment routine clinical practice for brain diseases have been developing rapidly. Challenges remain in precisely identifying the neuro-target and personalizing the treatment plan to improve their effectiveness. This mini-symposium will highlight recent progress in AI and neural engineering that advances targeted neuromodulation. It will cover technology development, animal model testing, translational applications, and clinical trials. The applications to both the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system will be discussed. The symposium includes presentations from the following renowned speakers. Dr. Shanbao Tong from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China Mainland) will introduce new low-intensity pulsed transcranial ultrasound stimulation and bridge animal studies and human clinical trials in ischemic brain injury. Dr. Yingchun Zhang from the University of Miami (Florida, USA) will discuss repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation using fMRI-based brain controllability analysis as guidance for precision medicine in depression treatment. Dr. Yuan Yang from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (Illinois, USA) will discuss EEG-guided closed-loop high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation for sensorimotor rehabilitation in neurological disorders. Dr. Xiaoling Hu from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Hong Kong, China) will highlight recent progress in self-help post-stroke rehabilitation using neuromuscular electrical stimulation and advanced robots, including rigid exoskeletons and soft exosuits.

Mini-symposia organizer:

• Yuan Yang

This annual NIH session will highlight funding opportunities at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) and provide valuable insights for both new and established investigators aiming to apply to funding. Experts from NIBIB will share strategies for navigating the NIH grant system, preparing competitive applications, and introduce their programs and funding opportunities. Join this interactive session to enhance your grant-writing skills and discover resources to support your pursuit of research funding. The session will also highlight the new Precision Medicine with AI: Integrating Imaging with Multimodal Data (PRIMED-AI) initiative, as well as other trans-NIH funding opportunities. The session will include a Q&A segment where you can ask questions and interact with the panel members.

The topics would benefit trainees, researchers, and investigators in all career stages. The spectrum of the presentation and panel discussion covers all the themes of EMBC 2026. Some of the knowledge discussed in the session may be beneficial for grant writing and application beyond NIH opportunities.

Mini-symposia organizer:

• Qi Duan

The rapid surge in developments of artificial intelligence (AI) has triggered both amazement and trepidation in the field of clinical sleep medicine. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine responded to these explosive changes in a recent updated position statement calling for a more controlled pace in the implementation of AI in clinical studies. Before 2010, there were only a handful of publications dealing with advanced computational techniques for automatic staging of sleep or classification of sleep-related breathing disorders. However, in the past two years, these have expanded seven-fold to incorporate state-of-the-art AI algorithms, including transformer-based models with attention mechanisms. Most accomplishments have been based on datasets obtained from large multi-center, multi-cohort studies collected from clinical sleep laboratories. AI-driven technologies are poised to expand this revolution in sleep diagnostics to the home. What will be the impact on the quality of sleep health? How will these new developments lead to improved therapeutic approaches for sleep disorders? How will issues such as fairness, transparency and privacy be addressed going forward? Academic, clinical and industry experts in the field will survey current developments, highlight the limitations and dangers, and predict future trends for the role of AI in sleep medicine and technology.

Mini-symposia organizer:

• Michael C.K. Khoo
• Thomas Penzel

Speakers, Talks and Presentation Times:

• 2:30 – 2:50 pm: (1)  Natividad Martínez Madrid, Reutlingen University, & Ralf Seepold, HTWG Konstanz, Germany: “Bridging the Lab–Home Gap with AI in Sleep Medicine: Minimal-Signal Models and Portable AHI Estimation”
• 2:50 – 3:10 pm: (2)   Andreas Brink-Kjær, Technical University of Denmark: “Evaluating Polysomnography Pre-training Methods for Sleep Foundation Models”
• 3:10 – 3:30 pm: (3)  Maurice Abou Jaoude, InteraXon Inc., Canada: “Wearable EEG and Foundation Models: The Future of AI-Driven Sleep Analysis”
• 3:30 – 3:50 pm: (4) Tejas Canchi, Resmed & University of Sydney, Australia: “Personalising Sleep Apnea Therapy with AI and Real-World Data”
• 3:50 – 4:00 pm: (5) Thomas Penzel, Charite University Hospital, Berlin: “Closing Remarks: The sleep centre in the future of sleep medicine – how will AI change the landscape?”

Despite rapid advances, artificial intelligence in healthcare remains largely correlation-driven, fragmented, and insufficiently aligned with clinical reality. Most deployed systems function as statistical predictors rather than true decision-support technologies, limiting their external validity, transportability, explainability, and regulatory acceptance. As a result, clinical adoption has lagged behind technical innovation, with weak integration into clinical workflows.

This minisymposium will explore how medical AI research can evolve to meet emerging clinical and regulatory expectations, with a particular emphasis on cardiovascular applications. Invited contributions will address key challenges in translating AI into routine clinical practice, including: (1) moving beyond correlation toward causal objectives; (2) treating interoperability, data governance, and regulatory compliance as core design constraints; (3) embedding meaningful clinical explainability through human-in-the-loop, co-creation with clinicians and patients; (4) reviewing best practices for generating hospital-based evidence on safety, adoption, and clinical value.
The minisymposium identifies a persistent gap between experimental AI models and their translation into safe, and adoptable clinical interventions, driven by unresolved methodological limitations, clinical integration challenges, regulatory and governance constraints.

Mini-symposia organizer:

• Péter Kovács
• Nicolai Spicher
• Gergő Bognár
• Carina Veil

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is clinically transformative, yet most therapies still rely on continuous stimulation tuned largely by trial-and-error. This mini-symposium highlights a new translational playbook: start with mechanistic circuit interrogation, identify causal network signatures, and then engineer stimulation patterns that drive durable, plasticity-based benefits in humans. We bring together leaders spanning cutting-edge preclinical circuit tools, first-in-human translation of novel stimulation paradigms, intraoperative human electrophysiology, and state-dependent/closed-loop DBS, and emerging cognitive DBS trials informed by brainstem circuit physiology. Talks will trace how optogenetic and synaptic pathology insights can be re-expressed as practical electrical stimulation strategies, how “non-continuous” paradigms can induce longer-lasting therapeutic effects, and how human intracranial recordings can validate pathway engagement and guide next-generation protocols. The session will end with a discussion on standardizing a mechanism-to-protocol pipeline across disorders (from Parkinson’s disease to Alzheimer’s disease and beyond) and accelerating DBS translation.

Mini-symposia organizer:

• Luka Milosevic

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) outcomes depend on where we stimulate and which pathways we recruit, yet programming remains time-intensive and variable across centers. This mini-symposium focuses on structural and functional biomarkers that enable data-driven DBS: (i) evoked signatures recorded from microelectrodes or therapy leads (e.g., local/cortical evoked potentials, motor evoked potentials), (ii) intracranial sensing of pathological dynamics (beta/gamma bursts and coherence), and (iii) neuroimaging biomarkers that predict outcomes and medication changes. Speakers will present converging evidence that stimulation-evoked responses can reveal pathway engagement and identify optimal contacts, while imaging-based features can inform patient selection and personalized targeting. Together, these approaches point toward automated or semi-automated programming workflows that reduce clinical burden, shorten time-to-benefit, and improve reproducibility across sites. The session will highlight engineering challenges (artifact removal, feature robustness, model generalization) and propose practical benchmarks for biomarker qualification and clinical translation. Together, these approaches usher in a new era of DBS, moving the field beyond empirically tuned stimulation toward biomarker-guided, mechanism-driven neuromodulation that fulfills the promise of precision neural engineering.

Mini-symposia organizer:

• Luka Milosevic

Developing effective neuromodulation strategies for motor recovery requires a mechanistic understanding of how specific neural pathways contribute to muscle activation and motor function. This mini-symposium focuses on pathway-specific neural plasticity across spinal and supraspinal levels, using the soleus muscle as an experimentally accessible and uniquely well-characterized model system. Among human muscles, the soleus occupies a unique position in motor control research: sensory afferent input, spinal and supraspinal reflex pathways, voluntary control, and learning-dependent plasticity have all been systematically studied within a single muscle. This unique body of knowledge enables otherwise inseparable components of human sensorimotor control to be examined in an integrated manner. Building on this foundation, the session will cover the neurophysiology of soleus activation and afferent contributions (Sinkjær), soleus activity during normal motor functions (Sinkjær), and approaches to induce targeted plasticity in distinct motor control pathways. These include variations of paired associative stimulation protocols targeting the spinal cord (Masani) and brain (Mrachacz-Kersting), as well as reflex operant conditioning (Thompson). With the growing availability of plasticity-inducing neuromodulation techniques, the soleus provides a powerful experimental platform for understanding pathway-specific contributions to movement control and for informing the design of targeted neurorehabilitation strategies to enhance motor recovery.

Mini-symposia organizer: 

• Kei Masani

This mini symposia focuses on recent advances in electroencephalography (EEG)-based brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) that support objective cognitive assessment and effective neurorehabilitation. The session will highlight how both passive and active BCI paradigms can be leveraged to extract meaningful information about brain state, cortical excitability, and functional capacity, with direct relevance for clinical screening and therapy.

Overall, the mini symposia aims to provide a broad, integrative view of how EEG-based BCIs are moving beyond proof-of-concept toward clinically meaningful applications. By connecting fundamental neurophysiology with translational technologies, the session will foster discussion on challenges, opportunities, and future directions for deploying BCI systems in real-world healthcare environments.

Mini-symposia organizer:

• Christoph Guger

Mini-symposium talks:

• Talk 1 – Natalie Mrachacz-Kersting: Brain-Computer Interface rehabilitation with TMS (20min)
• Talk 2 – Tomasz M. Rutkowski: Harnessing Passive Brain-Computer Interfaces for Real-Time Cognitive Assessment and Clinical Screening (20min)
• Talk 3 – James Tung: Advancing neuromotor rehabilitation technology: developing novel non-invasive strategies with EEG (20min)
• Talk 4 – Cortical Excitability During Brain-Computer Interface Stroke Treatment Predicts Functional State (20min)
• Questions & Discussion (10min)

This topic explores how wearable systems are evolving from passive materials into active, user-centric healthcare technologies. This symposium brings together designers, engineers, clinicians, and scientific researchers to examine how physiological sensors, biomimetic wearables, etc., can be seamlessly integrated into fashionable pieces to support health, wellbeing, and clinical care. Through our discussions, we will address the challenges of comfort, usability, data quality, ethics, and clinical translation, highlighting the importance of human-centered design in ensuring long-term adoption. By bridging fashion, function, and medicine, the symposium aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue and inspire new approaches to healthcare that are wearable, adaptive and attuned to the human body.

Mini-symposia organizer:

• Racquel Wright

Recent advances in biosensing and signal processing techniques have opened the possibility to collect large-scale and fine-grained recordings of biomedical signals obtained from different organ systems under the emerging paradigm of Network Physiology. The relevant datasets are typically made available in the form of multivariate time series, whose analysis allows to monitor the dynamic functionality of complex organ systems such as the brain, and of integrated physiological systems like the cardiovascular, cardiorespiratory and cerebrovascular systems, across different pathophysiological states. In this context, methods for multivariate time series analysis rooted in signal modelling, linear/nonlinear prediction, and information theory, are constantly developed to capture the complex interactions occurring among the units of single- and multi-organ physiological systems. Among these methods, those investigating high-order interactions that involve more than two system units constitute novel fundamental tools of time series analysis, as they can reveal emergent behaviors which cannot be captured by standard approaches based on pairwise measures. This minisymposium proposes an overview of the emerging tools to assess multivariate interactions in physiological networks, ranging from parametric models to model-free information-theoretic tools and graph signal processing, and of their application on multivariate time series derived from different physiological systems in different pathophysiological setups.

Mini-symposia organizers:

• Luca Faes
• Vlasta Bari

This mini-symposium addresses a critical gap in the “Fashion to Function” trajectory: the urgent requirement for smart textiles to accommodate the full spectrum of human diversity. While “smart fashion” often targets a standardized user, true medical function requires a rigorous transition toward inclusive design that accounts for diverse population and cultural communities. In this session, we are bringing together a multidisciplinary panel of experts in neuro-engineering, bariatric technology, adaptive fashion, and community-led innovation, this session moves through three critical layers of development. First, it examines the Physical layer, focusing on restoring mobility through textile-integrated Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) and addressing bariatric-specific ergonomics. Second, it addresses the Technical layer, bridging the gap between aesthetics and signal robustness. Finally, it explores the Societal layer by establishing ethical frameworks for Indigenous-led co-creation and scalable healthcare leadership.

Mini-symposia organizer:

• Saiful Hoque
• Marisol Campos-Navarrete

Recent advances in computer vision and deep learning have enabled the extraction of quantitative movement biomarkers directly from video recordings, transforming how clinicians assess neurological disorders. This symposium brings together researchers at the intersection of computer vision, rehabilitation engineering, and clinical neurology to examine the state of the art in video-based movement analysis for conditions including Parkinson’s disease, ataxia, stroke, SCI, and other movement disorders.

Topics will include vision-based human body movement analysis in neurological movement disorders, capturing movements grounded in biomechanics, integrating this into clinical practice, generative models for synthesizing pathology-conditioned gait sequences, multi-site benchmark datasets for model development and validation, and methods for mapping movement features to brain circuits and clinical outcomes. Speakers will address critical challenges in translating these technologies from research to clinical practice, including domain generalization across sites and populations, interpretability of learned representations, and validation against established clinical rating scales.

By bridging perspectives from clinical neurology, computer science, and biomedical engineering, this symposium aims to accelerate the development of objective, scalable, and clinically validated tools for neurological movement assessment.

Mini-symposia organizer:

• Babak Taati
• Andrea Iaboni
• R. James Cotton
• Soroush Mehraban

The symposium aims to engage EMB community on the significant role of standards as enablers of emerging technologies and how best practices can be integrated into the standardization frameworks to guide the safe and effective deployment of these technologies.

It is organized into four sessions, including three invited talks, followed by a panel discussion. The first session is an introduction to the IEEE standards lifecycle and how it provides guidance during different stages of an IEEE standards project. The second session is a case study on the published standard that has successfully engaged industry partners, device manufacturers and providers to enable the adoption of the TIPPSS framework (Trust, Identity, Privacy, Protection, Safety and Security) for cyber-physical systems, beginning with Clinical IoT and expanding to AI-based coaching for TIPPSS, research, energy grid, and distributed energy resources. The third session is a case study of an ongoing IEEE standard development project, that aims to establish a standardization framework for Brain Computer Interfaces to facilitate clearer communication and foster interoperability and reproducibility in BCI R&D. The final session is a panel discussion on the topic- “Opportunities and Challenges in Health Technology Standardization” and will involve four to five experts including a moderator.

Mini-symposia organizers:

• Hasan Al-Nashash
• Pradeep Balachandran
• Xiaorong Ding

The Mini-Symposium covers what start-up healthtech/medtech companies can do to promote sustained innovation, while also better positioning themselves for success (e.g., investment, strategic partnership, or acquisition). It builds on prior highly attended mini-symposia at past-EMBCs focused on the broader theme of biomedical technology translation and commercialization. The Mini-Symposium presents strategies to help raise capital, efficient management of limited resources, and lessons learned from past start-up experiences.

The Panel expands on what investors are expecting from a pitch made start-ups during fund raising, including expectations related to AI. The Panel presents and discusses examples of questions and information requests made by investors, acquirers and other potential strategic partners, during due diligence processes. The Intellectual Property section focuses on AI-related IP topics, as well as key aspects of a start-up’s patent portfolio, including patenting roadmap, freedom to operate and third-party risk assessment. The Mini-Symposium provides a checklist of actions to take to strengthen intellectual property assets prior to due diligence activities that occur during fund raising or exit events. The Mini-Symposium is intended to be interactive. Time will be reserved for Q&As, with the audience expected to engage with the panel on IP and start-up topics.

Mini-symposia organizer:

• Dorin Panescu

This mini-symposium presents a cohesive vision for how AI and Big Data can engineer a more sustainable and equitable future for rehabilitation care. We demonstrate a scalable technological pipeline: starting with low-cost, wearable sensors that enable continuous, real-world functional assessment, making precision monitoring accessible beyond clinical settings. We then show how AI-driven imaging analysis optimizes resource allocation in managing complex conditions like scoliosis. Through rehabilitation informatics, we illustrate how data integration maximizes the value of existing healthcare data to improve population-level outcomes. Finally, multi-omics powered by AI aims to uncover fundamental disease mechanisms, paving the way for targeted therapies that could reduce long-term disability burdens. Collectively, these talks showcase data-driven solutions designed to enhance care quality, accessibility, and cost-effectiveness across diverse populations.

Mini-symposia organizer:

• Hua Ling

This mini-symposium explores the trajectory of smart textiles from advanced fiber engineering to real-world clinical deployment. While “smart fashion” has gained traction, the transition to “medical function” requires a rigorous, user-centered approach that balances technical sensing capabilities with comfort, durability, and clinical validity. This session brings together a multidisciplinary panel, including biomedical and textile engineers, materials scientists, clinical researchers, and person with lived experience to discuss the innovation and potential of healthcare textiles.

Attendees will gain insights into the potential and challenges of textile-based data acquisition, the necessity of patient-led design, and the path toward commercial and clinical adoption.

Mini-symposia organizer:

• Saiful Hoque
• Vladan Koncar

We bring together an international team to show that sophisticated medical technologies can be developed bridging the gap between advanced biomedical engineering and the technical, supply chain, regulatory and practical realities of low‑resource settings, while meeting high clinical standards for safety and efficacy. We will present case studies and best practices.

Proyecto MASI is the first medical device fully designed, manufactured, tested, and approved for clinical use in Peru. In under six months, the team built a supply chain and production facility from scratch, created a new regulatory pathway, and deployed hundreds of ventilators into clinical care.

Infantix a robust, low cost handheld device, developed by the Center for Neurosciences of Cuba, automatically records and analyzes auditory responses to diagnose neonatal hearing deficits. Built under trade restrictions and economic hardship, it has been validated, deployed nationally, and is now being piloted in Mexico and Colombia.

In sub Saharan Africa, emerging biomedical engineering programs are training students to design, not just repair, medical technology. How can we harness their insights to build solutions that perform reliably despite unstable power, environmental challenges, high utilization, and maintenance capacity.

We’ll close by inviting attendees to share their own examples and design insights.

Mini-symposia organizer:

• Nevan Hanumara

With the rapid advancement and maturation of micro- and nanotechnologies, bio–nano–micro systems have emerged as powerful tools for biomedical analysis. By integrating innovations across molecular, cellular, and tissue length scales, these systems enable precise manipulation, detection, and analysis of biological samples within highly controlled microenvironments. The convergence of microfluidics, nanomaterials, biosensing technologies, and advanced microfabrication has significantly expanded the functional capabilities of these platforms, allowing complex biological processes to be recapitulated in vitro with high fidelity. Compared with conventional laboratory techniques, bio–nano–micro systems offer several advantages, including reduced sample and reagent consumption, enhanced analytical sensitivity, and improved temporal and spatial resolution. Their inherent miniaturization supports automation and high-throughput operation, making them particularly suitable for parallelized experiments and large-scale screening. In addition, the incorporation of nanoscale components enables highly specific molecular recognition and signal amplification, facilitating early disease detection and real-time monitoring of cellular responses. Extensive studies have demonstrated the applicability of these systems in diverse biomedical fields, such as point-of-care diagnostics, drug discovery, toxicity evaluation, and disease modeling. As fabrication strategies and system integration continue to evolve, bio–nano–micro platforms are expected to play an increasingly important role in precision medicine and translational research.

Mini-symposia organizer:

• Kin Fong Lei

Pain is a complex phenomenon involving distributed neural and physiological systems whose contribution and interactions are not yet fully understood. Despite the well-documented burden of pain in patient clinical pathways and its profound negative impact on quality of life, pain assessment and treatment remain sub-optimal, largely due to the subjective nature of pain and the limited understanding of its underlying neurophysiological mechanisms.

Recent technological advances in neurophysiological and physiological signal acquisition and analysis have provided new opportunities to investigate pain mechanisms across preclinical and clinical settings. These tools enable more objective, quantitative approaches to pain assessment and open new avenues for the development of improved diagnostic and therapeutic strategies.

This mini-symposium aims to highlight recent advances and open challenges in pain research based on neurophysiological and physiological signal analysis, spanning preclinical models, clinical studies, and wearable monitoring solutions. By bringing together perspectives from academia, clinical research, and industry, the session will present representative use cases while critically discussing methodological pitfalls, translational barriers, and emerging opportunities for integrating advanced signal processing and artificial intelligence approaches into pain assessment and management.

Mini-symposia organizer:

• Serena Moscato
• Valeria Saccà

Presentations

• Francesca Marturano “Non-invasive Spinal Cord Magnetic Stimulation for the Treatment of Chronic Neuropathic Pain: Preliminary Evidence of Efficacy in Rat Studies”
• Javier Pinzon-Arenas “Towards Objective, Integrated, Multimodal Electrophysiological Index for Quantifying Visceral Pain: Preliminary Results!
• Valeria Saccà “Decoding Pain: The Role of MRI, MEG, and EEG in Understanding Pain Mechanisms”
• Serena Moscato “Pain in the wild: wearable sensors as a double-edged sword”
• Maurice Aboud Jaode “Closing the Loop on Pain: Robust Signal Processing and Machine Learning Architectures for Wearable Neuro-Biofeedback”

Accurate assessment of body composition is central to clinical care, nutritional assessment, and population health research. A wide range of sensing technologies are used for this purpose, each based on distinct measurement principles and modeling assumptions, and these modalities vary substantially in accuracy, cost, and clinical utility. This mini-symposium will present a series of technical talks focused on next-generation approaches to body composition measurement, with an emphasis on modality-specific advances and comparative perspectives. Topics will include ultrasound-based assessment, bioimpedance analysis, and 3D shape-based computational methods. The session will also address future research directions and pathways to clinical translation, including multimodal integration, emerging clinical applications, and deployment in point-of-care and resource-limited settings. By emphasizing both technical foundations and translational considerations, this mini-symposium aims to inform the development of body composition technologies that are more accurate, equitable, and clinically meaningful. The mini-symposium will include presenters from both academia and industry.

Mini-symposia organizers:

• Bryan Ranger
• Maggie Delano

Cuffless blood pressure (BP) measurement is expected to improve hypertension awareness and control rates and may now be feasible due to recent technological advances in, e.g., wearable sensing and machine learning. As a result, cuffless BP monitoring devices are being widely pursued around the world. However, there are serious challenges in achieving accuracy and in validation. This mini symposium will cover recent advances in cuffless BP measurement and represents part one of two. The speakers are clinical, academic, and government leaders and will present on a range of topics including clinical and regulatory perspectives, BP changes and validation, and measurement methods.

Mini-symposia organizers:

• Ramakrishna Mukkamala, FIEEE
• Sreeraman Rajan
• Miodrag Bolić

When embedded in the treatment of critically ill patients (called hereafter “critical care treatment”), automation and autonomy can enable vigilant monitoring and precise titration of therapeutic agents while reducing clinician workload and potentially improving clinical outcomes. Hence, automated (and ultimately, autonomous) critical care treatment delivery enabled by advanced physiological monitoring and closed-loop control has received keen interest for several decades, with tremendous effort invested to date. The purpose of the proposed mini-symposia (two sessions) is to broadly share recent advances in the automation of critical care treatment in the context of physiological monitoring and closed-loop controlled treatment delivery made by key international leaders in the field. The mini-symposia consist of two sessions, where 12 speakers (6 speakers in each session) from around the world will present cutting-edge results pertaining to advanced hemodynamic monitoring based on conventional and novel wearable sensors and automated critical care treatments enabled by new developments in closed-loop control. Each mini-symposium will conclude with an open discussion and Q&A session to brainstorm future directions to be pursued.

Mini-symposia organizers:

• Jin-Oh Hahn
• Rayan Bahrami

Session agenda:

• Talk 1 (Opening) (Dr. Jin-Oh Hahn and Dr. Rayan Bahrami – UMD) – Toward Autonomous Critical Care Treatments: Advances, Gaps, and Opportunities (10 minutes)
• Talk 2 (Dr. Antonio Visioli – University of Brescia) – Closed-loop control of anesthesia: a help for the anesthesiologists (12 minutes)
• Talk 3 (Dr. Taylor Elise Baum) – Adaptive Closed-loop Control of Arterial Blood Pressure with Phenylephrine and Clevidipine (12 minutes)
• Talk 4 (Dr. Amor A. Menezes – UF) – Controlling Coagulation: Towards Automated Coagulation Control (12 minutes)
• Talk 5 (Dr. Andrew Reisner, MD – Harvard Med. School/MGH) – The Clinician-in-the-Loop: Lessons for Autonomous Technology (12 minutes)
• Talk 6 (Dr. James Weimer – Vanderbilt University) – Internet-of-Medical Things: Learning-Enabled Medical Cyber-Physical Systems on the Edge (12 minutes)
• Talk 7 (Dr. Evan Ross – USAISR) – Physiological Closed Loop Controllers for Combat Casualty Care (12 minutes)
• Q&A session (8 minutes)

This mini-symposium brings together experts from biomedical engineering, policy, industry, international organizations, and professional associations to explore how healthcare systems can be redesigned through sustainability-driven approaches. Rather than focusing on isolated technologies, the session addresses healthcare as an interconnected ecosystem, where engineering decisions influence environmental impact, governance models, innovation pathways, and societal outcomes.
The session will present concrete experiences ranging from circular economy initiatives in healthcare and sustainable policy roadmaps, to co-creation practices, professional networks, international frameworks, and data-driven approaches. Speakers will share perspectives from European and international projects, professional associations, global institutions, and academic research, highlighting how biomedical engineers engage with policymakers, communities, and diverse stakeholders.
By combining technical insight with policy, dialogue, and system-level thinking, the mini-symposium offers a multidisciplinary discussion on how biomedical engineering contributes to more sustainable healthcare practices in real-world settings. The session is designed to foster exchange between disciplines, encourage critical reflection, and showcase practical examples of sustainability-oriented innovation in healthcare engineering.

Mini-symposia organizer:

• Maria Fernanda Cabrera Umpierrez

While the application of AI/ML techniques in biomedical engineering (BME) research has exploded over the past several years, there has not been much discussion and consensus as to which pedagogical approaches are most efficacious for introducing this relatively new field into the BME curriculum. Different academic institutions have adopted varied approaches, with some adding AI/ML classes into the curriculum, while others work to integrate AI/ML contents directly into BME courses. Many programs introduce basic AI/ML early in the undergraduate years. Others offer introductory AI/ML courses for students entering BME at the Master’s level, who are frequently trained in the life sciences. How much “core” AI/ML content can be squeezed into the already dense curriculum of undergraduate or Master’s BME programs without adversely impacting learning in the other key pillars of BME knowledge but serve to enhance the other classes? How can we best incorporate “qualitative” issues such as interpretability and explainability, ethical concerns in AI application, bias and fairness in the development of databases, and the transparency of the underlying algorithms? This mini-symposium represents a first step towards developing a high-level perspective of the how’s and why’s of teaching AI/ML to the next generation of biomedical engineers.

Mini-symposia organizers:

• Sang Chalacheva
• Michael C.K. Khoo

Speakers, Talks and Presentation Order:

• Hans van Oostrom, Univ. of Florida: “AI across the curriculum: needs and implementation.”
• P. Sang Chalacheva, Carnegie Mellon University: “Inclusive teaching strategies for an ML gateway course in biomedical engineering”
• Nicolai Spicher and Andreas Brink-Kjær, Technical University of Denmark: “Challenges of teaching AI in Health Technology”.
• Georgios Mitsis, McGill University: “Data-driven methods for nonlinear systems identification: An educational perspective.”

Spinal cord injury (SCI) leads to substantial reductions in independence and entails considerable costs for the affected individual and the healthcare system. The development of interventions that can promote neurological recovery is a pressing need in the SCI community, and a major driver of neural and rehabilitation engineering advances with applications in other indications. Despite intensive efforts in this area, translating medical device innovations into clinical practice or home use is a persistent challenge. This session will spotlight key technologies that support the integration and evaluation of new tools in clinic and home environments after SCI. These include:

•  Implanted devices for neuromodulation of sensorimotor systems to restore lost function (Calvert).
• Brain-computer interface control of neuromodulation systems for independent use (Milosevic).
• Markerless motion tracking systems that are integrated into clinical workflows to enable routine data collection on motor performance (Cotton).
• Wearable video-based technologies that provide novel insights on hand use during daily activities at home (Zariffa).

 Through these topics, the mini-symposium will provide attendees with a current perspective on translational efforts in neurorehabilitation technology, as well as practical guidelines for achieving and evaluating implementation outside of laboratory environments.

Mini-symposium organizers:

• José Zariffa
• R. James Cotton
• Matija Milosevic
• Jonathan Calvert

Soft wearable robotics and smart textile technologies are emerging as promising solutions for rehabilitation and mobility assistance, particularly for neurological conditions such as stroke. This mini-symposium is centered on SWAG project, a four-year European project involving 13 partners from six European countries (United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Slovenia, Germany, and the Netherlands). SWAG aims to develop a new generation of fully soft, textile-based assistive garments that integrate inflatable fabric actuators, embedded soft sensors, and intelligent control strategies to empower human movement[GP1.1] across multiple applications.

The mini-symposium presents an interdisciplinary perspective combining soft robotics, smart textiles, biomechanics, and clinical gait analysis, with a strong emphasis on user-centered design as a driver of sustainable and equitable healthcare technologies. Advances in functional textiles for actuation and sensing will be discussed, highlighting their ability to conform to complex joint kinematics while achieving high force-to-weight ratios and adaptive compliance.

Upon completion, participants will be able to understand [GP2.1]stroke-specific requirements for wearable technologies designed to support gait-related activities and the potential of soft components to achieve those requirements in wearable devices. This will also serve as a practical example of how to integrate user-centred design with development of wearable robotics, co-designing with patients, clinicians, researchers and engineers.

Mini-symposia organizer:

• Martina Maselli

This mini-symposium will explore audiomics, an emerging area of research that uses speech and voice as digital biomarkers for health and disease. Our voices carry far more information than just words. They reflect how the brain, lungs, heart, metabolism, and sleep systems are functioning. With recent advances in signal processing, machine learning, and mobile health technologies, it is now possible to extract meaningful health indicators from everyday speech in a non-invasive and scalable way.

The session will feature talks from leading experts working on speech-based biomarkers for a range of conditions, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), diabetes, sleep disorders and sleep apnea, dementia, and heart failure. Speakers will share methodological innovations in audio and speech signal processing, machine learning approaches for feature extraction, and insights from clinical studies and real-world deployments.

Beyond technical advances, the symposium will also address important challenges such as clinical validation, robustness across diverse populations, bias, privacy, and ethical use of voice data. By bringing together researchers from academia, clinical settings, and industry, this session aims to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration and help move audiomic technologies closer to real-world clinical impact.

Mini-symposia organizer:

• Azadeh Yadollahi
• Ervin Sejdic