Scope

The International Conference on Bio-inspired Information and Communications Technologies (BICT) provides a unique venue for researchers and practitioners in diverse disciplines to seek the understanding of key principles, processes, and mechanisms in biological systems and leverage those understandings in design, engineering, and technological applications.

Biology offers an empirical and profound glimpse of dynamic stability, robustness, control, resilience, and survival.  Accordingly, the application of biological research to systems and technology holds immense potential and reveals many technical challenges.  BICT 2019 welcomes formal and rigorous research focused on the following three thrusts:  Direct Bioinspiration, Indirect Bioinspiration and Foundational Bioinspiration.  Details about each of the three thrusts, including example topics, can be found below.

The 2019 edition of the conference, due to be held at the Carnegie Mellon University on March 12-13, is expected to have a vibrant program featuring peer-reviewed papers, keynote speakers, panels, multiple technical sessions, focused special tracks, interactive demonstrations, poster sessions, informative co-located workshops, tutorials, artwork, and social events.

Thrusts and Topics

BICT 2019 offers three thrusts. Direct bioinspiration focus on utilizing physical/biological materials and systems within technology advances.  Indirect bioinspiration focuses on utilizing biological principles, processes and mechanisms within the design and application of technology.  Foundational Bioinspiration focuses on biology and technology evolving similar schemes and considers reasoning and validity studies examining the natural connections between biology and technology.

Thrust 1:  Direct Bioinspiration (systems utilizing biological materials, processes, and systems)

    Bacterial computing and communication
    Biometric security and privacy
    Biosensing
    Brain-computer and human-computer interface
    Cellular and membrane computing
    Chemical signaling and communication
    DNA computing and memory
    Energy harvesting from biological sources
    Molecular assembly computing and communication
    Physarum computing

Thrust 2:  Indirect Bioinspiration (systems and application design upon biological principle, processes and mechanisms)

    Amorphous computing
    Artificial chemistry, immune systems, gene regulatory networks and life
    Autonomous vehicle systems
    Biological process and data analysis
    Cellular automata
    Chaotic systems
    Computational epidemics
    Cyber security, privacy and intelligence
    Evolutionary computation
    Healthcare
    Intelligent systems
    Internet of Things (IoT)
    Mobile robotics
    Modeling and simulation
    Nature-inspired models and calculi
    Neural networks/computation
    Reaction-diffusion computing
    Self-organization
    Smart services and cities
    Swarm intelligence

Thrust 3 Foundational Bioinspiration (biology and ICT evolving similar schemes and validity)

    Adversarial modeling
    Agent based models
    Biological theory change and its impact on corresponding bioinspired technology
    Cellularization
    Costly signaling (Proof of work, stake, etc.)
    Deception
    Evolution
    Game theory
    Identification of theoretical obstacles that prevent transition from biology to technology
    Measures of validity and validation of methodology
    Mechanistic adaptability of theories from philosophy of biology to technology
    Natural kinds and species (i.e., classification of bioinspired technology)
    Network theory
    Recommender and verifier systems
    Signaling games, equilibria and conventions
    Smart contracts (Block chains, ICO, Governance)