The Communications Society Chapter of the IEEE Canadian Atlantic Section wishes to invite you to the following online webinar hosted by the North American Region of the Communications Society.

Abstract:

As Feynman presciently stated about the atomic scale, “There is plenty of room at the bottom” and communication is needed down there. There is a growing body of contributions from diverse fields that both leverages nanoscale properties and overcomes the communication barriers of the nanoscale environment. These include molecular motors, random carbon nanotube networks, calcium signaling, and quantum networking, to name but a few. This lecture focuses upon ad hoc communication networking at the nanoscale using all of these techniques and more.

We are all interconnected in ways that many have never fully anticipated. The cells within our body must coordinate with one another to form a distinct human being; communication at the molecular and nanoscale enables this to take place. A single cell must coordinate its own organelles; and again, extremely small-scale communication takes place, some of it surprisingly mechanical in nature. Organisms can communicate with one another over surprisingly long distances at the nanoscale. How many of these techniques can we harness to enable human-engineered nanoscale communication; for example, to support nanorobotic communication and other rapidly advancing technologies? Characteristics of the communication channel at the nanoscale and molecular levels have been a key factor in the evolution of organisms and will be a key factor in enabling nanotechnology to advance.

The applications are too significant and numerous to dismiss. One can imagine a human-engineered nanoscale in vivo Internet with the ability to communicate information to or from any area of the body, leveraging the body’s own signaling mechanisms, in order to better diagnose and treat diseases directly at the subcellular level. Nanoscale in vivo communication has the potential to avoid the harmful and invasive approach today of implanting radiation emitting radios with the body.

I hope that this lecture may inspire others to take this field far beyond these early ground-breaking stages and to participate in the many IEEE nanoscale communication activities, such as IEEE P1906.1.

About the Speaker:

Stephen F Bush received the B.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, the M.S. degree in computer science from Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Kansas, Lawrence.

He is currently a Researcher at General Electric Global Research, Niskayuna, NY. Before joining GE Global Research, he was a Researcher at the Information and Telecommunications Technologies Center (ITTC), University of Kansas. He has been the Principal Investigator for many DARPA and Lockheed Martin sponsored research projects including: Active Networking (DARPA/ITO), Information Assurance and Survivability Engineering Tools (DARPA/ISO), Fault Tolerant Networking (DARPA/ATO), and most recently, Connectionless Networks (DARPA/ATO), an energy aware sensor network project.

He is the author of Nanoscale Communication Networks (Norwood, MA: Artech House, 2010). He coauthored a book on active network management, titled Active Networks and Active Network Management: A Proactive Management Framework (New York, NY: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2001). He has taught Quantum Computation and Communication at RPI and Computer Communications at the State University of New York at Albany. Dr. Bush is the past chair of the IEEE Emerging Technical Subcommittee on Nanoscale, Molecular, and Quantum Networking. He is also on the steering committee for the IEEE Smart Grid Vision Project and Chair of the IEEE P1906.1 Working Group on Nanoscale and Molecular Communication.