Abstract: The cardiovascular disease (CVD) and coronavirus disease (COVID) are the most current pressing health challenges globally today. This talk will attempt to address the grand challenges through the paradigm shift to Health Engineering based on a convergence approach to integrate technologies across multiple scales in the biological hierarchy from molecular, cell, organ to system. The presentation will focus on the development of unobtrusive wearable 'SUPER-MINDS' technologies and their integrations with biomarker sensing, medical imaging and machine learning for the early prediction of acute CVDs. Potential applications in the fast response and precise control of COVID-19 will also be discussed. Using the atherosclerotic plaque assessment as an example, this talk will illustrate that the health convergence approach should allow the practice of 8- P’s medicine that is predictive, preventive, precise, pervasive, personalized, participatory, preemptive, and patient-centralized.

Biography: Dr. Yuan-Ting Zhang is currently the Chair Professor of Biomedical Engineering at City University of Hong Kong and the Adjunct Chair Professor at Shandong University. He is a LRG member of Karolinska Institutet MWLC. He was the Sensing System Architect in Health Technology at Apple Inc., California, USA in 2015, and the founding Director of the Key Lab for Health Informatics of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2007. Professor Zhang dedicated his service to the Chinese University of Hong Kong from 1994 to 2015 in the Department of Electronic Engineering, where he served as the first Head of the Division of Biomedical Engineering and the founding Director of the Joint Research Center for Biomedical Engineering.

Prof. Zhang serves as the Editor-in-Chief for IEEE Reviews in Biomedical Engineering, Chair of the Working Group for the development of IEEE 1708 Standard on Wearable Cuffless Blood Pressure Measuring Devices, Organizer of IEEE-MDBS series since 2002, Organizer of ISS-BHE series since 2007, and a member of IEEE Medal panel for Healthcare Technology Award since 2017. He was the Editor-in-Chief for IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine and the founding Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics. He served as Vice Preside of IEEE EMBS, Technical Program Chair of EMBC’98 in Hong Kong, Conference Chair of EMBC’05 in Shanghai, International Committee Co-Chair of EMBC’07 in Lyon, Internationale Committee Chair of EMBC’ 11 in Boston, Internationale Committee Chair of EMBC’13 in Osaka, Technical Program Co-Chair of EMBC’17 in Jeju Island, and International Committee Co-Chair of EMBC’2020 in Montreal. He was the Chair of 2018 Gordon Research Conference on Advanced Health Informatics and Chair of 2016-2018 IEEE Award Committee in Biomedical Engineering. Prof. Zhang's research interests include cardiovascular health engineering, unobtrusive sensing and wearable devices, neural muscular modeling and pHealth technologies.

He was selected on the 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 lists of China’s Most Cited Researchers by Elsevier. He won a number of international awards including IEEE-EMBS best journal paper awards, IEEE-EMBS Outstanding Service Award, IEEE-SA 2014 Emerging Technology Award. Prof. Zhang is elected to be IAMBE Fellow, IEEE Fellow and AIMBE Fellow for his contributions to the development of wearable and m-Health technologies.