Special Session #4

SPECIAL SESSION #4

Carlo Massaroni

Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Italy

• c.massaroni@unicampus.it

Shekh M. M. Islam

University of Dhaka, Bangladesh

• shekh@hawaii.edu

Chiara Romano

Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Italy

• c.romano@unicampus.it

Ahmed Rasheed

University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy

• ahmed.rasheed@unibz.it

Contactless and nearables technologies are gaining popularity for monitoring a broad spectrum of human activities and physiological signals across various scenarios. The growing interest in quantifying human performance and physiological parameters stems from a realization of the increasing desire for a cost-effective and inconspicuous approach to assessing one's health. This is often achieved by leveraging everyday technologies such as webcams and wifi modems. Unobtrusive systems have the capability to measure diverse quantities, including physiological parameters, user states, and activities, providing valuable insights for individuals ranging from everyday people to elite athletes and military personnel. Importantly, unobtrusive monitoring offers a means to collect unbiased, quantifiable data that is of great interest to medical professionals and sports scientists. The special session aims to explore a range of topics, spanning from innovative sensors and devices to advanced algorithms, simulation and modeling strategies for physical and cognitive assessment, unique biomarkers for non-traditional measures, and real-time, realistic data streaming.

The main topics are related to:

• Cutting-edge technologies and devices for contactless and nearables monitoring;
• Algorithms for processing and interpreting data;
• Strategies for simulating and modeling physical and cognitive assessments;
• Traditional and non-traditional biomarkers from unobtrusively collected signals;
• Metrics, algorithms and signal processing techniques;
• Physiological and physical variables, signals, and techniques;
• Reliability, validity and accuracy of sensors and measuring systems;
• Challenges and solutions for real-time data streaming, ensuring data accuracy in realistic scenarios.

Dr. Carlo Massaroni received his BSc (2010) and MSc (2012) in Biomedical Engineering and Ph.D. in Bioengineering (2017) from Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma (UCBM). Currently, he is Tenure-Track Assistant Professor at UCBM.
His research interests are focused on the design, development, and tests of sensors, measuring systems and devices for mechanical and thermal measurements, with particular emphasis on the design of wearable and unobtrusive systems for the measurement of physiological and behavioral parameters. He is principal investigator and WP leader in several ongoing national and international projects dealing with wearable and unobtrusive technologies for physiological monitoring and biomarkers estimations in the medical, occupational and sports fields.
He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, and serve as Secretary in IEEE Sensors Council Italy Chapter. He is also Associate Member of the "Wearable Biomedical Sensors & Systems" TC of the IEEE EMB.

Shekh M. M. Islam (Senior Member, IEEE) received the B.Sc. (Hons.) and M.Sc. degrees in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 2012 and 2014, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA, with a focus on biomedical applications incorporating RF/Microwave technologies in 2020. He is currently an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Dhaka. He is also a JSPS Invitational Fellow with Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan. His research interests include radar systems, antenna array signal processing, adaptive filter techniques, and machine-learning classifiers for pattern recognition. In the Summer of 2019, he was also a Radar System and Applications Engineering Intern with ON Semiconductor, Phoenix, AZ, USA. He has also been an Affiliate Member of the technical committee of the MTT-28 Biological Effects and Medical Applications of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Technique Society. He was the recipient of the 2020 University of Hawaii at Manoa Department of Electrical Engineering Research Excellence Award. He was also the student paper finalist at the IEEE Radio Wireless Week (RWW’19) conference, which was held in FL, USA. He has also been an Editorial Board Member of Frontiers in Physiology journal and a Review Editor of IEEE Access, IEEE Sensors, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, and IEEE Journal of Electromagnetics, RF and Microwaves.

Chiara Romano received his BSc (2018) and MSc (2021) in Biomedical Engineering at Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma (UCBM), where currently is PhD student in Biomedical Engineering.
She has participated in numerous national research projects and received some awards from scientific societies. He has authored or co-authored several papers published in journals or proceedings of international conferences and workshops in fields related to measurements and sensors. Her research interests mainly focus on the measurement of physiological parameters. In particular, she is devoted to the development, deployment and characterization of wearable systems for monitoring vital parameters, as well as the development of algorithms for data analysis.

Ahmed Rasheed, received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering (2011) from U.E.T (Lahore), Pakistan and master's degree in Energy Systems Engineering (2014) from G.I.K Institute, Pakistan. He obtained his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2020 with a thesis entitled “Impulse Wave Sensor Based on Mechanical-Field-Coupled Thin-Film Transistor for Vital Signs Monitoring,” from Sun Yat-sen University - Carnegie Mellon University, Joint Institute of Engineering, China. He was serving as an Assistant Professor at the National University of Sciences & Technology in ICS stream of School of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science since January 2020. Currently, he is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano at the Faculty of Engineering (Sensing Technologies Laboratory) and working in collaboration with South-Tyrolean company. His main research areas include wearable sensors, flexible sensors, TFTs and their applications, energy harvesters, and sensors for food, environmental and agriculture applications.