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)

Special Track on Human-Machine Teaming (Cybernetics)

Organized by Ryan Mckerdrick, Northrop Grumman

Special Track on Medical Informatics

Special Track on Philosophy of Science

Submission deadline: 11 December 2018

Publication

All registered papers will be published by Springer and made available through SpringerLink Digital Library.

Conference proceedings will be submitted for inclusion in leading indexing services, including Ei Compendex, ISI Web of Science, Scopus, CrossRef, Google Scholar, DBLP, as well as EAI’s own EU Digital Library (EUDL).

Authors of selected papers will be invited to submit an extended version to:

Mobile Networks and Applications (MONET) Journal (IF: 2.695)

All accepted authors are eligible to submit an extended version in a fast track of:

Paper Submission

Papers should be submitted through EAI’s ‘Confy’ paper submission system prior to the paper submission deadline of Oct 1^st 2018 and must comply with the Springer format (see Author’s kit here).

Papers will be peer-reviewed with decision notifications on Dec 1^st 2018. Author teams for accepted papers should plan to register with the conference and prepare a camera-ready copy for February 1^st 2019. The conference organization will grant and present a best paper award during the conference social event.

Workshops, Tutorials, Demos and Artwork

BICT welcomes proposals for workshops with innovative ideas and sufficient participants. The organizer should prepare a proposal to include: scope, potential impact, CFP, program members, estimated papers, workshop duration and estimated participants.

BICT also invites proposal for tutorial sessions. The proposals should include instructor’s name and organization, title of the tutorial, abstract, estimated audiences, tutorial length.

BICT encourages submissions of proposals for live demos and bio-inspired artwork. The proposals should include name, title, abstracts, and visual media links, e.g., Youtube videos or web link.

Important Dates

Full paper submission deadline:

Extended to 7 December 2018

Notification deadline:

13 January 2019

Camera-ready deadline:

10 February 2019

Conference dates:

13-14 March 2019

Workshop and Tutorial proposal deadline:

1 June, 2018

Notification deadline for workshop and tutorial proposals:

1 July, 2018

Demo and Art Proposal deadline:

1 October, 2018

Notification deadline for demos and artwork:

1 December, 2018

Call for Papers