Posted: May 19, 2010

The 2010 Monte Verita Workshop: Frontiers in Neuroengineering - Second call for abstracts

(Nanowerk News) The 2010 Monte Verità Workshop: Frontiers in Neuroengineering. Ascona, Switzerland, September 5-9th, 2010.
Neuroengineering is a rapidly growing discipline that takes its lymph from the increasing cross-fertilization of many areas of technology and science. By means of neuroengineering, advances in diverse technologies and in cellular and molecular biology converge into powerful tools to improve our understanding and treatment of neural (dis)functions.
Recently such a discipline has gone beyond the concept of a simple application of engineering principles to central nervous system (CNS) comprehension, leading to the emergence of one of the more exciting interdisciplinary research fields in modern neurosciences.
Neuroengineering applies novel approaches to the study of the brain by bringing together tools from computational neuroscience, information theory, electronics, electrophysiology, biomaterials, nanotechnologies and tissue engineering, towards understanding, repairing, replacing, enhancing, and exploiting the electrical properties of the nervous system.
Understanding the brain is one of the key grand challenges of modern science. In Neuroengineering such challenge extends from fundamental research on computation in the central nervous system to new frontiers in neural prosthetics.
Because of its cultural tradition and its special atmosphere, Monte Verità is the ideal settings to bring together students, researchers, professionals and world- leaders of a discipline that is not any longer in its infancy and that is becoming fully mature.
Second Call for Papers
We invite Authors to participate with contributions in all topics related to Neuroengineering, from novel (nano)materials interfacing the nervous system or as tools for basic research, to novel enabling technologies, and from basic neurobiology and electrophysiology to neuroprosthetics. We aim at covering topics across levels of investigations, from the single-neuron to the network- and the system levels.
The workshop will consist of invited speakers and registered participants, though it will be limited to a maximum of 100 people.
The workshop will include extra time for audience discussion of the presentations, allowing the group to have intense debates and creative discussions on the issues, challenges, and the new ideas in the field.
Depending on the number and quality of the contributions, a special issue of a journal might be organized, and selected contributions invited after the workshop, conveying and summarizing the most important and relevant conclusions.
We are in close contact with previous and new sponsors and we are trying to setup a number of student travel grants and best poster awards. We will keep the web site and the participants updated.
We strongly encourage the participation of young researchers and their active and "disinhibited" participation to the scientific meeting, to honor the cultural and historical atmosphere of the meeting venue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Verit%C3%A0).
Download the workshop flier (pdf).
Early registration deadline: June 5th, 2010
Submission
All abstract should be submitted following the template, the guidelines and the procedures indicated online, for publication in the workshop abstract book. All participants are required to register online.
Source: The Workshop Organizers