BioEM2017: Thank you from the Presidents!

Dear Members,

The time for BioEM2017 is past, now just good memories remain. It was good fortune to have the annual meeting this year in such a beautiful place, Hangzhou, China. All attendees could enjoy not only the interesting conference, but also the delightful weather, and especially the tasty Chinese food during our stay in the West Lake Villa and social dinner at the Hangzhou Cuisine Museum.

Meetings like this cannot be successful without the effort and dedication of the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) members, Technical Program Committee (TPC) members, and BEMS Board/EBEA Council members.

Our special thanks to Zhengping Xu, Zhengping Yu, and Guangdi Chen from the Chinese Bioelectromagnetics society, and all members of the LOC who worked long and hard to get all the arrangements in place in order for the meeting to run smoothly and successfully.

We thank the TPC, chaired by Joachim Schüz and Luc Martens, as well as the dozens of reviewers of the abstracts for the very well-balanced and outstanding scientific program. Thanks to the plenary speakers, the workshop conveners, chairpersons, and also to the scientists who presented oral and poster papers – we really appreciated all attendees’ participation.

The plenary sessions and platform presentation sessions covered most of the key issues of bioelectromagnetics, including epidemiology, laboratory studies, dosimetry, mechanistic and theoretical studies, clinical applications and electroporation, and standards and public health policy, which included having some of the most distinguished speakers in each area. This year, several emerging areas were also covered, including epigenetic research and the bridging of research disciplines and how EMF research can learn from other disciplines such as nanotechnology and optogenetics. The use of mobile phones to deliver health services has generated in the recent years considerable enthusiasm among governments, donors, and implementers of health programs. This theme was addressed in detail on Tuesday morning, in the plenary talks on “mHealth – New horizons for prevention implementation and for research using mobile technology”.

This meeting also again included the student flash poster sessions which gave the 61 students the opportunity to enhance their presentation abilities in a challenging 3 minute-format in front of the attendees, before presenting their work in more depth at the poster sessions.

During the conference a number of awards, including student awards, were made. It is remarkable that the most prestigious awards of our societies, the d’Arsonval and the Chiabrera awards, presented this year to Karl Schoenbach and Aude Silve, respectively, both recognised their work dealing with the use of electroporation with applications in medicine and biotechnology. Further details will be posted soon.

Finally, we deeply thank our sponsors: Auden, MEC, Zhejiang University, EPRI, GSMA, Xierkang, Mag Life, Safetytech, MWF, Pulse Biosciences, and Shanghai Kaichun, for helping to make BioEM2017 a wonderful and successful meeting.

See you next year, June 25-29 2018, in Portorož, Slovenia!!

 

Best regards,
Dr.Andrew Woods       Dr. Isabelle Lagroye    
President of BEMS           President of EBEA