Keynote Speech II by M. Jamal Deen

Two of the grand challenges in engineering are concerned with water and healthcare. The challenge related to water is especially critical because water is a vital and necessary resource for all humans. However, chemicals and bacteria in drinking water pose significant health risks for us. To improve the safety of drinking water, sensitive, low-cost, rapid detection methods are required for water quality monitoring. These sensors must also be precise, reliable, easy-to-use, and of small dimensions. For monitoring the quality of drinking water, the two most critical parameters are pH and chlorine. In the first part of the presentation, we describe our work on developing small-size, flexible, easy-to-use, and low-cost pH and chlorine sensors that are also very sensitive and reliable. We also describe our on-going work to optimize the physical structures and manufacturing conditions for miniaturized sensing devices that are integrated with preprocessing modules and electronics towards smart sensors. In the second challenge related to healthcare, the situation is compounded by the fact that over the past century, we have seen a continual increase in life expectancy primarily due to improvements in public health, nutrition, medicine and personal hygiene. However, this phenomenal success is now coupled with aging population demographics and falling birth rates. In fact, never before in human history have we been confronted with such a large aging population, nor have we developed solid, cost-effective solutions for the healthcare, social needs and well-being of the elderly. Here, we describe our work in which we use advances in information technology, wireless communication, web-based technologies and autonomics, to develop new, smart and cost-effective solutions for the health wellness of the elderly. Such solutions would enable elderly to lead independent lifestyles in their own homes while being non-invasively, non-intrusively and seamlessly monitored for the early detection of symptoms, so diseases can be treated earlier than in later stages as is currently done; to promote health wellness; as well as to treat chronic illnesses. Through a few examples related to walking, sleeping and vital signs sensing, we will describe our ongoing work as well as the challenges we have uncovered. In particular, we will focus on the critical role of information technology (IT) in developing innovative, low-cost and high impacting solutions to the pending elderly demographic crisis in a smart home. Finally, we will describe the role of the practical solutions being developed for these two grand engineering challenges and their impact in the evolution of smart cities.