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WET Frontier
(Information Technology Meets the Bioworld)
IST99
The "IST99 - Exploring the Information Society" conference and
exhibition is taking place in Helsinki, Finland from 22 to 24 November this
year. The event-co-organised by the European Commission's Information Society
Directorate General and Tekes, the National Technology Agency of Finland - is
THE information society community conference in Europe. The three-day programme
of the conference consists of sessions, workshops, a large exhibition and
several additional events covering a vast array of themes related to the future
of the information society. One of the sessions, 'Wet Frontier', will be of
specific interest to biomedical engineers. The speakers will give a visionary
overview of the biological frontier of information technologies and debate its
potential areas of convergence and impact.
IST99 is a unique meeting place for Internet gurus, business people, IT
specialists, and politicians from all over the world. It opens windows on the
future of the information society in terms of technologies and applications, the
legal and regulatory frameworks, visionary examples of how people will live in
the future, emerging job opportunities, how business will be competitive, and
how governments will serve citizens. It will also present the new Information
Society Technologies RTD work programme for the year 2000.
Wet Frontier
During the past few decades our understanding of the fundamental information
processes of the living world has progressed in leaps and bounds. During the
same period of time, information sciences and technologies have produced
dazzling breakthroughs. These developments have fueled the emergence of new
interdisciplinary areas of science and inspired novel applications for the
benefit of citizens, industries and societies.
Today scientists are actively employing wetware, hardware and software
methodologies to uncover the basic principles and mechanisms governing the
behaviour of living organisms at molecular, cellular, organism and population
levels. Some scientists study how to do biology with computers
whilst others are trying to do computing with biology. The
prospects of possible future applications are breathtakingly vast.
The purpose of the session is to give a visionary overview of the biological
frontier and the potential areas of convergence and impact on emergent
information society technologies. The speakers will highlight the main axes of
development reaching beyond conventional software and hardware implementations
and drawing inspiration from concepts found in living organisms. They will
debate the future visions and ethical constraints of these brave new information
technologies that prospect and exploit the areas on the wet frontier and beyond.
Speakers:
Moderator: Prof. Bill O'Riordan (UK)
- Simon Bensasson, Head of Unit, Future and Emerging Technologies, European
Commission: Introduction
- Prof. Teuvo Kohonen (Finland) Helsinki University of Technology: Artificial
abstraction
- Prof. Aaron Sloman (UK), University of Birmingham: Deep and shallow
models of motivation and emotion
- Dr Chris Winter (UK), CyberLife Technology Ltd: Artificial organisms:
blending biology and computers
- Dr Giacomo Indiveri (Switzerland), University of Zurich: Neuromorphic
engineering: from neurons to transistors.
- Prof. Uri Sivan (Israel) TECHNION Israel Institute of Technology: Self
assembly of molecular scale electronics by biotechnology
- Prof. Rolf Eckmiller (Germany), University of Bonn: Neurotechnology:
towards learning implanted neuroprostheses
- Mr Peter Warren (UK) Technology Editor, Scotland on Sunday: The
Frankenstein factor
For more information and on-line registration, please take a look at
www.ist99.fi
Pekka Karp
Pekka.Karp@dg13.cec.be
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