Foundation for Research on Information Technologies in Society
The Foundation for Research on Information Technologies in Society (IT’IS) was founded in 1999 through the initiative and support of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), the medical faculty of the University of Zurich (UZH), the global wireless communications industry and several governmental agencies. The aim was to create a flexible and ynamic research institution capable of addressing the research needs of society in the explosively expanding field of information technologies. The scope was expanded in 2005 to medical technologies. Today, the core competences at IT’IS encompass: 1) electromagnetic (EM) measurement technology; 2) computational life sciences including electrodynamics, thermal, acoustic, flow and mechanics and various dynamic tissue models (perfusion, electrophysiology/neural dynamics, thermoregulation, etc.); 3) development of the widely used virtual population; 4) reliable wire-less communication links within the body or between implanted devices and exterior equipment for biometric applications; 5) development of exposure systems and exposure assessment; 6) EM safety of medical devices; 7) medical diagnostic and therapeutic applications of EM, in particular EM cancer treatment modalities and neurostimulation/ prosthetics; 8) virtual patient applications for safety and efficacy assessment and treatment planning. Today, IT’IS is considered to be the reference laboratory for EM exposure evaluations and therapeutic applications of EM fields (cancer therapy, neurostimulation). IT’IS serves as an expert on the assessment of experimental and numerical modelling uncertainty, as well as on the verification and validation of simulations, and is an active contributor to ongoing standardization efforts, especially in the field of computational life sciences. The research team of over 35 people is composed of senior researchers, post-docs, PhD and Master’s students. The closest and most important cooperative ties of IT’IS are with ETHZ and the UZH, but, in addition, the IT’IS team has a great deal of experience in multi-disciplinary cooperation through a multitude of projects (both as project partner and project coordinator), resulting in an international network of over 100 research partners from academia and industry in Europe, the US and Asia.
IT’IS, with the group led by Prof. Niels Kuster will be responsible for the development of the hybrid EM-neural dynamics model (WP5) and will, in addition, be involved in the activities related to the development of the closed-loop control algorithms (WP6), the iterative design of the regenerative autonomic interface (WP2), and the system integration (WP7).