The world's largest biomedical engineering society awards INESC TEC’s researchers

The world's largest biomedical engineering society awards INESC TEC’s researchers

For the first time, the work developed by hundreds of Portuguese researchers in the biomedical engineering area was awarded by the world's largest and oldest biomedical engineering society, the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS). 

31st July 2019

The “IEEE EMBS Outstanding European Chapter” award was given to the Portuguese chapter of this society, led by Miguel Coimbra, researcher of INESC TEC’s Centre for Biomedical Engineering Research (C-BER).

The distinction took place during the 41st annual conference of EMBS, which was held between 23 and 27 July in Berlin, Germany. In this community, in addition to the chapter’s coordinator, Miguel Coimbra, several INESC TEC’s researchers are involved, namely João Paulo Cunha, Ana Maria Mendonça, Aurélio Campilho, Carlos Ferreira, Carlos Rodrigues and Jaime Cardoso.

“The excellence in the work of the national biomedical engineering community is being recognised,” highlights Miguel Coimbra, who is also a Professor at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto (FCUP) and who received, as president of the national chapter of IEE EMBS, the “IEEE EMBS Outstanding European Chapter”.

“This was a particularly bright year with a biennial conference hosted by the Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa (ISEL), which had over 300 participants, a dozen of high quality events in Portugal that were recognised and supported by IEEE EMBS PT, the emergence of another students association at ISEL and the arrival of an eloquent and influential IEEE EMBS Distinguished Lecturer, Professor Michael Friebe of the University of Magdeburg, Germany”, describes the researcher.

The Portuguese chapter of IEEE EMBS, which was created 13 years ago, has the collaboration of around 300 researchers from all over the country, including professors and researchers from FCUP, INESC TEC and the Faculty of Engineering of U.Porto.

This way, Portugal won the IEEE EMBS Outstanding European Chapter 2019 award for the first time.

About IEEE EMBS and the national chapter

IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) is the world’s largest association of engineers, which seeks to promote scientific excellence through high impact publications in newspapers, conferences, standards and educational/professional activities. EMBS is the chapter within IEEE that promotes engineering applied to medicine and biology. IEEE EMBS has more than 2 000 members from 97 countries. Within this society, regions, sections and section chapters were created in order to easily spread the message.

EMBS has 122 chapters spread around the world, which are divided into five geographic areas: Asia-Pacific, Europe, Middle East/Africa, Latin America, and North America (including Canada). In Europe, there are 22 chapters, including the one from Portugal. This year, Portugal won the award along with the chapter from Malaysia (in the Asia-Pacific area) and with Ecuador’s chapter (in the Latin America area).

The Portuguese chapter was created in 2006 aiming at disclosing and promoting the biomedical engineering status in Portugal.

The researchers mentioned in this news piece are associated with INESC TEC, FCUP and FEUP.