It is well known that most of the diseases can be more effectively treated at an early stage Being a relatively new subspecialty in healthcare, predictive medicine enables either prevention or early treatment of a given disease The scientific challenges of understanding the pathogenesis of chronic diseases to the extent that we can effectively prevent, detect, diagnose and treat them are substantial Nevertheless, there is an enormous amount of talent available to meet these challenges Genomic biomarkers promise the risk of disease prediction, to enable early detection of disease, to improve treatment selection and to monitor the outcome of therapeutic interventions Also, with big data, predictive medicine may soon be able to quantify individual risk for a variety of healthcare outcomes Throughout this panel, both biomarkers and big data will be addressed, showing how clairvoyance is performed in medicine.
In our world, there is a rising necessity for change and new ways of living, from what powers everything around us to our nutrition. This panel focuses on the search for a clean source of energy, from the smallest element of life – the cell – to waste from biotechnological processes in order to create a biofuel. Change is also overdue on our way to feed and nourish ourselves, so let’s focus on discoveries in food technology, particularly on the development of smart, active and edible food packaging to extend the shelf life of perishable food and prevent food losses.
Within the space of nearly a year, the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has dominated the work of thousands of researchers in an unprecedented global effort. The COVID-19 outbreak has evoked a scare of epic proportions to the world, due to its potential to spread and infect humans worldwide. Welcome aboard to a journey through the History of pandemics across the globe. Throughout this journey, we will visit the three Bioengineering branches, allocated into past, present and future, face to face in a mighty discussion. Bioengineers may have significant roles fighting pandemics, from critically analysing past pandemics, to applying artificial intelligence tools in diagnosis and prognosis of epidemics, passing through vaccine development and molecular studies.
Bioengineering professionals, using their broad background knowledge and expertise, are able to go far throughout their professional pathway, and MIB/MEB students are not an exception. Within this panel, MIB/MEB Alumni come back home to inspire the audience by presenting their journey through the Bioengineering world.
With a growing population, we need to make sure that drug treatments are available for everyone and that they are as effective as possible. Pharmaceutics are always evolving and there is a continuous need to optimise the production of recombinant protein medicines, the delivery of substances, and the speed of diagnosis, while making sure the environment, the economy, and humanity can keep up. Innovative approaches like nanofluidics, molecular pharming, and drug encapsulation aim to take pharma to a whole new level and improve health all around the world.
Tissue regeneration is the process of renewing and growing tissue to repair or replace what was injured. It is achieved by enhancing the opportunity for one cell type to populate the damaged area all the while providing guidance to the developing cells. Using the power of new and innovative biofabrication technologies, electrical stimuli, biomaterials, and stem cells to promote tissue regeneration in cases where normal growth is not viable or possible, bioengineering allows for improvement of function and the possibility of extending life using several regeneration techniques that can be applied to the most varied tissues, from cartilage to bone and nervous tissue and even the regeneration of complete organs. In this panel, we will take a deeper look into the most recent discoveries in the world of tissue regeneration and understand the impact that this new biotechno- logical approach to tissue damage has on life.
Emotion is fundamental to human experience, influencing cognition, perception, and everyday tasks such as learning, communication, and even rational decision-making. Traditionally, emotions were linked to lifeless machines, and were normally studied by psychologists. However, recently, the emotional features are captured and processed by a computer, inside a multidisciplinary knowledge background involving psychology, cognitive, physiology and computer sciences. New ways to communicate, understand and respond to human behaviour are being developed, in order to advance wellbeing. Along this panel, some challenges will be unriddled, namely: “How can sensing and affective strategies transform human and computer interaction?”, “How interactions between humans and technologies can be impacted by emotions?”, “How systems can be designed to utilize human emotions to enhance capabilities?”.
Biosensors are devices used to detect the presence or concentration of a biological analyte, such as a biomolecule, a biological structure or a microorganism. Research and development of biosensors is becoming an extensively studied discipline, strongly contributing to advances in many fields, namely in next-generation medicine and in industry, by detecting various chemical compounds. This panel represents a multidisciplinary research in chemistry, biology and engineering, simultaneously preventing and monitoring various problems that a bioengineer can face.
