In the last decade, there has been an increased interest in proposing, investigating, manufacturing – and therefore in regulating – novel medical approaches and technologies complementary or even competitive to the traditional pharmacological and surgical ones that are aimed at recovering lost body functionalities (e.g., limb movement) or at relieving medical conditions derived from compromised organ functions. The goal of bioelectronic medicine is the use of smart devices to ensure efficient, safe and personalized medical treatment through the precise and therapeutic delivery of physical agents (electromagnetic fields, heat, acoustic waves, etc.) to the nervous system. In silico modelling is widely used to facilitate the development and the optimization of these technologies (e.g., electroceuticals) and allows mechanistic investigations, the identification and and estimation of treatment-related quantities of interest (QoIs) (e.g. specific dose and dose metrics), the investigation of safety and performance related aspects (e.g. dose uncertainty) as well as personalized treatment. In this talk the challenges faced by bioelectronic medicine will be discussed, and the in silico methods developed to facilitate the engineering of multiple neurostimulation-related technologies (including electroceuticals, spinal cord and deep brain stimulators, as well as non-invasive brain stimulation devices) are discussed.

Biography:  Antonino M. Cassarà earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from the Università degli Studi di Catania, Italy in 2004 and his PhD in physics at the Università di Roma ‘La Sapienza’ (Italy) in 2008. He joined the IT’IS Foundation in May 2014 as a post-doctoral fellow to work on projects related to MRI safety of medical implants. Since 2017 he is IT’IS project leader for neurostimulation and application head for neurostimulation-related applications. His main research activities include the development of realistic image-based in silico models of neurostimulation scenarios, of computational technologies for medical device design and optimization and treatment personalization and applied computational neuroscience. Antonino serves as a scientific reviewer for several peer-review scientific journals as well as for conferences and funding agencies. He recently became a certified expert in regulatory, quality and clinical affairs related to medical devices and contributes in the development of multiple computational platforms for computational life sciences including Sim4Life (ZMT Zurich Med Tech AG, Zurich, Switzerland) and the US NIH oSPARC.

The event is free, but please register on the website. The link to attend the meeting will be provided to registered attendees closer to the date of the event. https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/287023