Special Session #9

SPECIAL SESSION #9

Michela Borghetti

University of Brescia, Italy

• michela.borghetti@unibs.it

Bruno Andò

University of Catania, Italy

• bruno.ando@unict.it

Mauro Serpelloni

University of Brescia, Italy

• mauro.serpelloni@unibs.it

Oscar Casas

Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain

• jaime.oscar.casas@upc.edu

Recently, the massive diffusion of modern technologies oriented towards the Internet of Things (IoT) is revolutionizing the concept of sensors in many fields. Indeed, thanks to recent technological advances in prototyping techniques and manufacturing processes, biomaterials, transmission protocols and processing strategies, the concept of the sensor as a sensing element has evolved into that of a smart sensor.

The word smart indicates that transducers, conditioning electronics, transmission hardware and processing algorithms can be integrated into a single device integrated and miniaturized into the object to make it smart. Therefore, smart sensors are becoming an important support for health not only for measurements in modern healthcare, including point-of-care diagnostics and wearable device monitoring, but also for measurements in advanced agriculture, in the food safety chain and in the industry filed.

In the near future, there will be a strong demand for IoT sensors and devices integrated on any object of arbitrary size and shape to provide new and improved tools. In this context, innovative manufacturing technologies, such as printed electronics and additive manufacturing, represent a viable solution for designing and manufacturing such devices and tools and for embedding them on different 2D and 3D substrates. These technologies are modernizing many application fields such as wearable devices, Industry 40 and IoT thanks to their ability to recognize both physical and chemical quantities which facilitate better monitoring of health in many fields.

Consequently, this special session encourages the presentation of smart devices, sensors, applications and technological solutions that allow health monitoring for industrial and biomedical applications.

Topics include (but are not limited to):

• Devices, sensors and applications for health
• Innovative fabrication technologies;
• Printed sensor applications;
• Flexible/stretchable electronics;
• Printed sensor system;
• Additive manufacturing;
• Sensors for smart devices;
• Innovative fabrication methods for sensors directly on objects;
• Metrological characterization of sensors for biomedical and industrial applications;
• Signal processing for printed sensors and smart objects;
• Printed sensors integrated on wearable and IoT.

Michela Borghetti received the M.S. in Electronics Engineering and the Ph.D in Technology for Health from the University of Brescia (Italy) in 2012 and 2016 respectively. From 2016 to 2017, she was temporary research fellow with the Department of Information Engineering, University of Brescia. Currently she is Research Fellow with the same department. Her research activity includes the design, the fabrication and the characterization of sensors for biosignals and healthcare using low-cost technologies. Furthermore, she is developing smart devices and smart objects for industrial applications.

Bruno Andò is Full Professor in Measurement Science at the Department of Electric, Electronic and Information Engineering of the University of Catania. He received the M.S. in Electronic Engineering and the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1994 and 1999, respectively.
His research activity focuses on technologies for the rapid prototyping of sensors, smart sensing systems for Assistive Technology, smart materials for sensors, multi-sensor architectures and sensor networks, non linear energy harvesting, advanced signal processing. Since 2013 he is a Senior Member of IEEE.
He is the Editor in Chief of the IEEE Magazine on Instrumentation and Measurements and Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurements.

Mauro Serpelloni received his M.Sc. Laurea and Ph.D. in electronic instrumentation from the University of Brescia in 2003 and 2006, respectively. Since 2021 he is Full Professor in Measurement science with the Department of Information Engineering, University of Brescia. His research interests include electronic instrumentation, sensors, contactless transmissions between sensors and electronics and signal processing for microelectromechanical systems. Recently, research has been addressed to the development of printed sensors, wearable sensors, autonomous sensors for biomedical applications and devices implantable inside the human body. He is manager of a new laboratory for aerosol jet printing.

Oscar Casas, received a B.S degree in telecommunications engineering and a Ph.D. in telecommunications engineering from the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain, in 1994 and 1998, respectively. He is currently an Associate Professor of Electronic Engineering with UPC and teaches courses in several areas of electronic instrumentation. His current research interests include sensor interfaces, autonomous sensors, electric impedance measurements, electronic instrumentation, and noninvasive physiological measurements.