• The rapid proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has unlocked transformative potential in healthcare, sports, industrial monitoring, and human-computer interaction. Despite significant advances, the practical deployment of wearable IoT systems faces key challenges related to energy eƯiciency, real-time processing, heterogeneous sensor integration, and scalable AI implementation. These issues are compounded by the need for lightweight, low-power solutions capable of delivering robust performance in resource-constrained environments.

  • The session focuses on sensor networks and intelligent systems driving next-generation monitoring across diverse fields, such as structural health inspection, predictive maintenance, condition monitoring, and automotive. Topics might include sensor node design, data acquisition, digital twins, edge processing and tiny Machine Learning.

  • With continuous advancements in technology, the capabilities for data collection, distribution, storage, and processing have significantly improved. This has led to an increasing use of sensors in multiple disciplines to enhance problem-solving capabilities and intelligent decision-making. Using low-power resource-constrained computation devices, near- and in-sensor computation has emergedas an alternative approach to traditional cloud computing architectures. By processing and analyzing data closer to the source, near- and in-sensor computation offers faster data throughput, reducedor even zero bandwidth requirements, enhanced data privacy,security, and the potential for autonomous operation.

  • The continuous evolution of microsystems has led to a significant impact in the fields of sensors and actuators. The possibility to integrate non-standard materials, e.g. piezoelectric or magnetic materials, with silicon represents a cornerstone for next-generation miniaturized chemical, physical, biological or optical sensors and microactuators. This progress is leading to new challenges and opportunities for modern applications in several research fields, such as physics, electronics, chemistry, biology, biomedical sciences, and microfluidics. In this context, we invite researchers and scientists to submit contributions on scientific and technical aspects of emerging designs and innovative employments of microsystems for sensors and actuators.

  • The world's growing population, changing climate, and shrinking agricultural land pose immense challenges for meeting global food security needs. Crop yields must increase dramatically on existing farmland to feed up to 10 billion people by 2050. Precision agriculture aims to optimize crop production and minimize environmental impact by using technologies like sensors, robotics, and data analytics. 

  • The conference highlights the ubiquity of sensors in everyday products, industrial processes, and specialist research applications. This can often be attributed to the transferability of sensor systems between applications. In recent years this has been facilitated by factors such as the rapid expansion of IoT and mobile electronics. Systems can often be tested in lab conditions, which are consistent with many indoor applications.

  • This Special Session proposes an overview of how the bio/chemo-sensor components, both the transducer and the receptor, can be used to modify the response of the biological/chemical sensor system to produce the desired optimal performance for the specific application, e.g. the detection range can be changed among different target concentration ranges. Highly sensitive bio/chemo-sensors configurations are developed by using innovative platforms that efficiently excite ultra-sensitive phenomena (e.g., surface plasmon resonance (SPR) or Localized SPR, electrochemical, Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS), Whispering Gallery Modes (WGMs), Bloch surface waves, fluorescence, to mention a few). These probes/transducers can be combined with different kinds of chemical or biological receptors for several application fields, such as Point of Care testing (POCT), Lab on Chip (LoC) devices, optical fiber probes and cavities for bio/chemo-sensing. The selectivity of the sensor is ensured by specific Molecular Recognition Elements (MRE) in contact with the sensing surfaces, such as molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs), antibodies, aptamers, nanoMIPs, etc. A plethora of target molecules can be measured with the proposed approaches, such as pollutants, viruses, bacteria, toxic metals, pesticides, biomarkers, or other analytes of interest in diKerent matrices.