Welcome from the Conference Chairs of the 4th International Electronic Conference on Sensors and Applications

All participants of ECSA-4 are welcome to submit the extended work to the Sensors Special Issue "Selected Papers from the 4th International Electronic Conference on Sensors and Applications".

We gladly announce that Dr. Francisco Falcone, Prof. Kunio Shimada, Mr. Stephen Reece, Dr. Filippo Ubertini,
Prof. Dr. U. Schmid and Prof. Hugo J. Avila-Paredes' papers were awarded the ECSA-4 Best Paper Award in 2017.

We are pleased to announce the 4th International Electronic Conference on Sensors and Applications. After the success of the three editions from 2014 to 2016, this year edition will focus on 5 thematic areas where sensors are changing science:

• Biosensors (Session A)
• Chemical Sensors (Session B)
• Physical Sensors (Session C)
• Sensor Networks (Session D)
• Applications (Session E)

There will be 2 specific sessions:

• Smart Cities (Specific Session S1)
• Smart Sensing Systems and Structures (Specific Session S2)

and also a Poster session. Posters can be presented without an accompanying proceedings paper and will be available online on this website during and after the e-conference. However, they will not be added to the proceedings of the conference.

Participants will have the opportunity to examine, explore and critically engage with issues and advances in these areas. We hope to facilitate discussions and exchange within the community.

This event will solely be an online proceeding which allows the participation from all over the world with no concerns of travel and related expenditures. This type of conference is particularly appropriate and useful because research concerned with sensors is progressing rapidly. An electronic conference provides a platform for rapid and direct exchanges about the latest research findings and novel ideas. The participation as well as the “attendance” of this online conference is free of charge.

The 4th International Electronic Conference on Sensors and Applications will be held at https://sciforum.net/conference/ecsa-4, on a platform developed by MDPI to organize electronic conferences.

The 4th International Electronic Conference on Sensors and Applications is sponsored by MDPI and the scientific journals Sensors. Accepted papers will be published in the proceedings of this e-conference, and selected papers will be published in Sensors with a 20% discount off the APC. Sensors is an Open Access publication journal of MDPI in the field of the science and technology of sensors and biosensors (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors).

We hope the community will share this enthusiasm and help making this 4th edition a success – for many to come in the future.

The Chairs of the 4th International Electronic Conference on Sensors and Applications.

Brief Bio-Sketch of Dr. Stefano Mariani

Stefano Mariani received an M.S. degree (cum laude) in civil engineering in 1995 , and a Ph.D. degree in structural engineering in 1999; both degrees are from the Polytechnic University of Milan. He is currently an associate professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the Polytechnic University of Milan. He was a research scholar at the Danish Technical University in 1997, an adjunct professor at Penn State University in 2007, and a visiting professor at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University in 2009. He is a member of the Editorial Boards of: Algorithms; Applied Mathematics and Sciences; the International Journal of Computer Science and Application; the International Journal of Information and Computer Science; the International Journal on Advances in Systems and Measurements; Micromachines; Open Transactions on Wireless Sensor Network; the PIRAD Journal of Sensors; and Sensors. His main research interests are: the reliability of MEMS that are subject to shocks and drops; the structural health monitoring of composite structures through MEMS sensors; numerical simulations of ductile fracture in metals and of quasi-brittle fracture in heterogeneous and functionally graded materials; extended finite element methods; the calibration of constitutive models via extended and sigma-point Kalman filters; and multi-scale solution methods for dynamic delamination in layered composites.

Brief Bio-Sketch of Dr. Francesco Ciucci

Francesco Ciucci is an assistant professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology; his education was supported by a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship and a Bechtel Fellowship. He pursued a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Heidelberg’s Institute of Scientific Computing, where he received a Marie Curie Reintegration Grant from the European Union (2010-2013). Prior to that, he obtained a dual M.Sc. degree in Applied Mathematics/Applied Physics at the Ecole Centrale Paris, France and in Aerospace Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy. His current research interests include: modeling electrochemical devices (fuel cells, batteries, and sensors), optimal experimental design, numerical methods for energy conversion and storage, and SOFC material development.

Brief Bio-Sketch of Dr. Dirk Lehmhus

Dirk Lehmhus received his mechanical engineering diploma based on studies (at Volkswagen’s central laboratory) dedicated to the galvanic corrosion of magnesium alloys. He joined Fraunhofer IFAM in 1998, and has been working on metallic foams and structures since then. Dr. Lehmhus obtained a PhD in production technology at Bremen University for studies concerning the optimization of aluminum foam production processes and properties. From 2006 to 2009, he lectured on “Materials Science and Mechanics” at the University of Applied Science (FH) Bremen. In May 2009, he moved to the University of Bremen to become managing director of its Scientific Center ISIS (Integrated Solutions in Sensorial Structure Engineering), the foundation of which he helped organize. The center is dedicated to the development of sensorial materials and sensor-equipped structures. Since 2009, he has been regularly involved in topic and symposium coordination at the Euromat conference series, with a special focus on materials with transport applications.

Brief Bio-Sketch of Dr. Thomas B. Messervey

Tom Messervey has over 20 years of engineering experience, which includes military service in the US Army Corps of Engineers, industrial experience with the Italian Engineering Company, D’Appolonia, teaching excellence at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and coaching services as the EU Facilitator for the Intelligent Manufacturing Systems program (www.ims.org). He serves as an expert for the European Commission in textiles, manufacturing, and energy efficiency. His research interests focus on using sensor data to make better engineering decisions across design, assessment, maintenance, inspections, and energy management to include machine learning. He is a member of the International Association of Bridge Maintenance and Safety (IABMAS), the International Association of Life Cycle Civil Engineering (IALCCE), and a technical reviewer for the International Journal of Safety and Security Engineering and the Journal of Structure and Infrastructure Engineering.

Brief Bio-Sketch of Dr. Alberto Vallan

Alberto Vallan received the M.S. degree in Electronic Engineering from the Politecnico di Torino (Italy) in 1996 and the Ph.D. degree in Electronic Instrumentation from the University of Brescia (Italy) in 2000. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Electronic Measurements with the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications of the Politecnico di Torino. His research interests are mainly in the measurement and sensor fields and are focused on the development and characterization of fiber sensors and measuring instruments for industrial applications. Dr. Vallan is a Senior Member of the IEEE/Instrumentation & Measurement Society.

Brief Bio-Sketch of Dr. Stefan Bosse

Stefan Bosse received his physics diploma in the year 1998 at the University of Bremen addressing surface distortion measuring methods based on correlation analysis of scattered laser light. He received a doctoral degree in physics in the year 2002 at the University of Bremen based on laser-light scattering measuring methods used for high-viscose liquid flow analysis. Beside natural science, his scientific interests were devoted from the beginning to distributed computing systems and distributed operating systems. In the year 2004 he joined the Department of Computer Science and the working group robotics working as a senior researcher and lecturer. Since 2002 until today he focuses his work on parallel and distributed systems in general, sensor networks and sensorial materials, Artificial Intelligence (Agents and Machine Learning), Cloud-based computing and the Internet-of-Things, but also on System-on-Chip circuit design and computer aided design (high-level synthesis). Interdisciplinary work is one major skill. Since 2008 he conducts projects in the ISIS Sensorial Materials Scientific Centre pushing interdisciplinary research bridging material and computer sciences, and recently joining the ISIS council. He acts as a reviewer and guest editor for international journals and joins international conference programme committees, and he gives multiple lectures at the University covering basics of computer science, parallel and distributed systems, circuit design, and material-integrated sensing systems.

Submissions should be done by the authors online by registering with www.sciforum.net, and using the "New Submission" function once logged into system.

1. Scholars interested in participating with the conference can submit their abstract (about 200-250 words covering the areas of manuscripts for the proceedings issue) online on this website until 1 October 2017.
2. The Conference Committee will pre-evaluate, based on the submitted abstract, whether a contribution from the authors of the abstract will be welcome for the 4th International Electronic Conference on Sensors and Applications. All authors will be notified by 5 October 2017 about the acceptance of their abstract.
3. If the abstract is accepted for this conference, the author is asked to submit the manuscript, optionally along with a PowerPoint and/or video presentation of his/her paper (only PDF), until the submission deadline of 21 October 2017.
4. The conference proceedings papers and presentations will be available on sciforum.net/conference/ecsa-4 for discussion during the time of the conference 15–30 November 2017 and will be published in Journal Proceedings.
5. The Open Access Journal Sensors will publish Special Issue of the conference and accepted papers will be published in the proceedings of the conference itself. After the conference, the Conference Committee will select manuscripts that may be included for publication in the Special Issue of the journal Sensors (the submission to the journal is independent from the conference proceedings and will follow the usual process of the journal, including peer-review, APC, etc.).

Manuscripts for the proceedings issue must have the following organization:

First page:

• Title
• Full author names
• Affiliations (including full postal address) and authors' e-mail addresses
• Abstract (200-250 words)
• Keywords
• Introduction
• Methods
• Results and Discussion
• Conclusions
• (Acknowledgements)
• References

Manuscripts should be prepared in MS Word or any other word processor and should be converted to the PDF format before submission. The publication format will be PDF. The manuscript should count at least 3 pages (incl. figures, tables and references) and should not exceed 6 pages.

Submission: Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.sciforum.net/login by registering and logging in to this website.

Accepted File Formats

• MS Word: Manuscript prepared in MS Word must be converted into a single file before submission. When preparing manuscripts in MS Word, the Electronic Conference on Sensors and Applications Microsoft Word template file (see download below) must be used. Please do not insert any graphics (schemes, figures, etc.) into a movable frame which can superimpose the text and make the layout very difficult.

4th Electronic Conference on Sensors and Applications Microsoft Word template file and LaTex template file

• Paper Format: A4 paper format, the printing area is 17.5 cm x 26.2 cm. The margins should be 1.75 cm on each side of the paper (top, bottom, left, and right sides).
• Paper Length: The conference proceedings paper should not be longer than 6 pages. The conference manuscript should be as concise as possible.
• Formatting / Style: The paper style of the Journal Sensors should be followed. You may download the template file to prepare your paper (see above). The full titles and the cited papers must be given. Reference numbers should be placed in square brackets [ ], and placed before the punctuation; for example [4] or [1-3], and all the references should be listed separately and as the last section at the end of the manuscript.
• Authors List and Affiliation Format: Authors' full first and last names must be given. Abbreviated middle name can be added. For papers written by various contributors a corresponding author must be designated. The PubMed/MEDLINE format is used for affiliations: complete street address information including city, zip code, state/province, country, and email address should be added. All authors who contributed significantly to the manuscript (including writing a section) should be listed on the first page of the manuscript, below the title of the article. Other parties, who provided only minor contributions, should be listed under Acknowledgments only. A minor contribution might be a discussion with the author, reading through the draft of the manuscript, or performing English corrections.
• Figures, Schemes and Tables: Authors are encouraged to prepare figures and schemes in color. Full color graphics will be published free of charge. Figure and schemes must be numbered (Figure 1, Scheme I, Figure 2, Scheme II, etc.) and a explanatory title must be added. Tables should be inserted into the main text, and numbers and titles for all tables supplied. All table columns should have an explanatory heading. Please supply legends for all figures, schemes and tables. The legends should be prepared as a separate paragraph of the main text and placed in the main text before a table, a figure or a scheme.

It is the authors' responsibility to identify and declare any personal circumstances or interests that may be perceived as inappropriately influencing the representation or interpretation of clinical research. If there is no conflict, please state here "The authors declare no conflict of interest." This should be conveyed in a separate "Conflict of Interest" statement preceding the "Acknowledgments" and "References" sections at the end of the manuscript. Financial support for the study must be fully disclosed under "Acknowledgments" section.

MDPI AG, the publisher of the Sciforum.net platform, is an open access publisher. We believe that authors should retain the copyright to their scholarly works. Hence, by submitting a Communication paper to this conference, you retain the copyright of your paper, but you grant MDPI AG the non-exclusive right to publish this paper online on the Sciforum.net platform. This means you can easily submit your paper to any scientific journal at a later stage and transfer the copyright to its publisher (if required by that publisher).