Event details

Monday, April 13
Seoul, South Korea
In-Person Event

The 2026 Nature Forum on the Future of Sensing Technologies will take place in Seoul, South Korea, on 13 April 2026. Hosted in partnership with Yonsei University, Sungkyunkwan University, and Hanyang University, this one-day meeting marks the official launch of Nature Sensors, a new journal dedicated to connecting and empowering the global sensing community.

The Forum will bring together scientists, engineers, and researchers from across disciplines to explore the current state and future directions of sensing technologies. The programme will feature expert talks, discussions on emerging opportunities and challenges in the field, and an interactive session in which Nature Sensors editors and leading experts will jointly examine key issues and potential solutions shaping the next generation of sensing.

Attendees will also have the opportunity to engage with researchers during a dedicated poster session, providing a platform for students and participants to showcase their work and exchange ideas.

Join us in Seoul for a day of scientific insight, community building, and a first look at the vision behind Nature Sensors.


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Speakers

Xinge YU
Xinge YU

City University of Hong Kong, China

Xinge Yu is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering at City University of Hong (CityU), the Member of the Hong Kong Young Academy of Sciences, Young Member of Hong Kong Academy of Engineering. He is the Associate Director of Institute of Digital Medicine at CityU, Associate Director of Hong Kong Centre for Cerebro-cardiovascular Health Engineering. Prof Yu is the recipient of NSFC Distinguished Young Scientist Grant (Scheme A), RGC Research Fellow, NSFC Excellent Young Scientist Grant (Hong Kong & Macao), Innovators under 35 China (MIT Technology Review), New Innovator of IEEE NanoMed, MINE Young Scientist Award, Stanford's top 2% most highly cited scientists etc. Prof. Yu is the Associate Editor of Science Advances, Microsystem & NanoEngineering, Bio-Design and Manufacturing etc. Xinge Yu’s research group is focusing on skin-integrated electronics and systems for VR and biomedical applications. He has published 200 papers in Nature, Nature Materials, Nature Biomedical Engineering, Nature Machine Intelligence, Nature Communications, Science Advances etc., and 50 patents filed/granted.

Sheng Xu
Sheng Xu

Stanford University, USA

Dr. Sheng Xu is a tenured professor and the inaugural Director of Emerging Technologies in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University, with a courtesy appointment in Electrical Engineering. He earned his B.S. degree in Chemistry from Peking University and his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Subsequently, he pursued postdoctoral studies at the Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research group is interested in developing new materials and fabrication methods for soft electronics, with a particular focus on wearable ultrasound technology. His research has been presented to the United States Congress as a testimony to the importance and impact of NIH funding. He has received numerous honors, including the NIH Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award, NIH Trailblazer Award, Sloan Fellowship, IEEE EMBS Technical Achievement Award, ETH Zürich Materials Research Prize for Young Investigators, MRS Outstanding Early Career Investigator Award, and a finalist of the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists. He is a Fellow of AIMBE, IEEE, and MRS.

John A. Rogers
John A. Rogers

Northwestern University, USA

Professor John A. Rogers began his career at Bell Laboratories as a Member of Technical Staff in the Condensed Matter Physics Research Department in 1997, and served as Director from the end of 2000 to 2002.  He then spent thirteen years at the University of Illinois, as the Swanlund Chair Professor and Director of the Seitz Materials Research Laboratory.  In 2016, he joined Northwestern University as the Simpson/Querrey Professor, where he is also Director of the Institute for Bioelectronics.  He has co-authored nearly 1000 papers and he is co-inventor on more than 100 patents.  His research has been recognized by many awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship (2009), the Lemelson-MIT Prize (2011), the Smithsonian Award for American Ingenuity in the Physical Sciences (2013), the Benjamin Franklin Medal (2019), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2021), the James Prize from the NAS (2022) and the IEEE Biomedical Engineering Award (2024).  He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Simone Fabiano
Simone Fabiano

Linköping University (LiU)

Simone Fabiano received his MSc degree in Industrial Chemistry from the University of Catania (Italy) in 2008, working on nanostructured materials for organic photovoltaic cells.

In 2012, he earned his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Palermo (Italy) with a work aimed at controlling the molecular packing of organic semiconductors for efficient charge transport in thin film transistors and solar cells. From 2010, he also worked as a visiting PhD student in the group of Prof. Maria Antonietta Loi at the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials of the University of Groningen (The Netherlands).

In 2012, he carried out postdoctoral research at Linköping University (Sweden) with Prof. Magnus Berggren, and in 2016 he joined the group of Prof. Antonio Facchetti and Prof. Tobin J. Marks at Northwestern University (USA), where he worked as a Marie Curie Fellow and a VINNEMER Fellow until December 2017.

Simone Fabiano is now an Associate Professor at the Department of Science and Technology at Linköping University, where he guides the research activities of the Organic Nanoelectronics group. Since October 2020, he is also a Docent in Applied Physics.

His research interests include the development of organic conductors and mixed ion-electron conductors for printed electronics and neuromorphic computing.
Joshua Yang
Joshua Yang

University of Southern California

Joshua Yang is the Arthur B. Freeman Chair Professor in the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Southern California. His research focuses on emerging electronic materials and devices for next-generation computing, including memristive systems, neuromorphic hardware, and in-memory computing architectures for artificial intelligence. Prior to joining USC, Yang was a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and spent several years at HP Labs developing advanced memory and computing technologies. He holds more than 120 patents and has published extensively on neuromorphic and post-CMOS computing systems.
Zheng Vitto Han
Zheng Vitto Han

Shanxi University, China

Zheng Vitto Han is a research professor at the Institute of Optoelectronics, Shanxi University, China. He also serves jointly as the deputy lab director at the Liaoning Academy of Materials (LAM) and the director of the Institute of Quantum Materials and Devices at LAM in Shenyang, China. He obtained his Ph.D. at the Néel Institute, CNRS, France, and conducted postdoctoral research at Columbia University in New York City. His research primarily focuses on the emerging physical properties of functional materials at mesoscopic scales and on further implementing these interesting properties in future applications of nano-assemblies and nanoelectronics. Over the past few years, his team has uncovered a series of novel physical phenomena and nanostructures, such as the demonstration of a finFET with a single atomic fin, the realization of robust quantum Hall phases through the interfacial charge transfer and the induced charge orderings, the development of van der Waals polarity-engineered 3D integration of 2D complementary logic. The related works have been published in journals including Nature, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Electronics, and Nature Communications.

Kilwon Cho
Kilwon Cho

Postech

Kilwon Cho is a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at POSTECH (since 1988), specializing in polymer science, interface engineering, and organic electronics. He directs the Global Frontier Research Center for Advanced Soft Electronics, focusing on flexible displays and wearable sensors. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Akron.
Nae-Eung Lee
Nae-Eung Lee

Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU)

Nae-Eung Lee is a Professor in the Department of Advanced Materials Science and Engineering at Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU). His research focuses on flexible and stretchable electronic materials and devices for wearable and biomedical applications, including synaptic semiconductor devices, soft sensors, and integrated systems for human–machine interfaces and health monitoring.
He has authored hundreds of publications in the fields of nanomaterials, nanoelectronics and biointegrated sensing technologies, and leads the Semiconductor Nano-systems Laboratory at SKKU.
Elisa Donati
Elisa Donati

University of Zurich

Elisa Donati is a researcher and group leader at the Institute of Neuroinformatics, a joint institute of the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich. Her work focuses on neuromorphic engineering and bioinspired computing systems for biomedical and wearable technologies. She develops energy-efficient, brain-inspired signal processing approaches that enable devices to interact with the nervous system in real time, with applications in neuroprosthetics, rehabilitation and digital health. Donati received her PhD in BioRobotics from the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa and leads research on closed-loop neuromorphic systems for adaptive biomedical devices.
Sahika Inal
Sahika Inal

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

Sahika Inal is an Associate Professor of Bioengineering at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), where she leads the Organic Bioelectronics Laboratory. Her research focuses on the design of organic electronic materials and devices that can interface with biological systems, enabling biosensing, health monitoring and therapeutic technologies. Inal’s work explores mixed ionic and electronic conduction in organic materials and the development of bioelectronic devices capable of recording and modulating biological signals.
Yang-Kook Sun
Yang-Kook Sun

Hanyang University

Yang-Kook Sun is a Professor in the Department of Energy Engineering at Hanyang University in Seoul. His research focuses on advanced energy-storage materials and next-generation rechargeable batteries, including lithium-ion, sodium-ion, and lithium–sulfur systems. Sun is widely recognised for pioneering work on high-energy cathode materials for electric-vehicle batteries and for introducing concentration-gradient cathode designs that have contributed to the commercial development of long-range lithium-ion batteries. He previously worked at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology and has authored hundreds of scientific publications in the field of battery materials and electrochemistry.
Jinwoo Cheon
Jinwoo Cheon

Yonsei University

Jinwoo Cheon is a distinguished South Korean chemist and pioneering nanomedicine researcher, currently serving as the H.G. Underwood Professor of Chemistry at Yonsei University and Director of the IBS Center for Nanomedicine. He is renowned for developing magnetogenetics for remote neural control and for advances in high-performance MRI contrast agents.

Panelists

Silvestro Micera
Silvestro Micera

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Silvestro Micera is Professor of Bioengineering at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and holds the Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Translational Neuroengineering. His research focuses on neuroprosthetics and neural interfaces that restore sensory and motor function in people with neurological injuries or limb loss. Micera’s work integrates neuroscience, robotics and bioelectronics to develop implantable neural interfaces and bionic prostheses that can interact directly with the nervous system. He also leads the Translational Neural Engineering Laboratory at EPFL and is internationally recognised for pioneering advances in neuroprosthetic technologies.
Joseph Wang
Joseph Wang

University of California, San Diego (UCSD), USA

Joseph Wang is a Distinguished Professor of Nanoegineering, a SAIC Endowed Professor  and the Director of the Center of Wearable Sensors (CWS) at University of California San Diego (UCSD), USA. Dr. Wang has made pioneering contributions to the fields of wearable sensors, biosensors, and microscale robots. He is a member of the US National Academy of Inventors, and of the European Academies of Engineering and of Science and Arts,  and a fellow of the RSC, ECS and AIMBE. He has authored over 1300 research papers, 12 books, and 60 patents. He has been a has been a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher since 2015 (H Index 216). Wang holds Honorary Professor from 11 different universities and is the recipient of 3 National American Chemical Society Awards for Analytical Chemistry (2024), Electrochemistry (2006) and Instrumentation (1999), of the Ralph Adams Pittcon Award in Bioanalytical Chemistry, of the  Talanta Medal, 2021 IUPAC Analytical Chemistry Medal, the Breyer Medal (Australia), Heyrovsky Medal (Czech Republic) the Speirs Medal (RSC), and the IEEE Sensor Achievement Award, 2021.

Wei Gao
Wei Gao

California Institute of Technology, USA

Wei Gao is a Professor of Medical Engineering and Heritage Medical Research Institute Investigator in Division of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of California, San Diego in 2014 as a Jacobs Fellow and an HHMI International Student Research Fellow. In 2014-2017, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.

He is an Associate Editor of Science Advances, npj Flexible Electronics, Biosensors and Bioelectronics, and Sensors & Diagnosis. He is a recipient of NSF Career Award, ONR Young Investigator Award, IAMBE Early Career Award, Sloan Research Fellowship, Pittcon Achievement Award, IEEE EMBS Early Career Achievement Award, IEEE Sensor Council Technical Achievement Award, MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators Under 35, and Falling Walls Breakthrough of the Year in Engineering and Technology. He is a World Economic Forum Young Scientist, a Highly Cited Researcher (Web of Science), and an AIMBE fellow. His research interests include wearable biosensors, digital medicine, bioelectronics, flexible electronics, and micro/nanorobotics. For more information about Gao’s research, visit www.gao.caltech.edu.

Jeehwan Kim
Jeehwan Kim

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Jeehwan Kim is Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His research focuses on next-generation electronic and photonic materials and devices, including neuromorphic computing hardware, advanced semiconductor technologies and nanomaterials for flexible and energy-efficient electronics. Prior to joining MIT, Kim was a research staff member at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center, where he worked on photovoltaics, graphene and advanced CMOS technologies. His work has led to numerous patents and innovations in semiconductor materials and device engineering.
Lance Li
Lance Li

National University of Singapore, Singapore

Dr. Lain-Jong (Lance) Li is currently a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Materials Science at the National University of Singapore. He has held esteemed positions, including Chair Professor of Future Electronics at The University of Hong Kong and Director of Corporate Research at TSMC. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and serves as an Associate Editor for Nano Letters under the American Chemical Society.

Dr. Li completed his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Chemistry at National Taiwan University in 1994 and 1996, respectively. Subsequently, he worked as a Senior R&D Engineer at TSMC from 1997 to 2002. He obtained his Ph.D. in Condensed Matter Physics from the University of Oxford in 2006 and commenced his academic career as an Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He served as an Associate Research Fellow at Academia Sinica in Taiwan in 2010 and joined KAUST in Saudi Arabia in 2014, where he advanced to the position of Full Professor by 2016. Dr. Li returned to TSMC as the Director of Corporate Research in late 2017. In 2021, he was appointed as a Chair Professor at The University of Hong Kong, and in 2025, he joined the National University of Singapore. His research is focused on Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD), tool design, device fabrication and integration, and the growth of 2D semiconductor materials, including graphene and boron nitride. He holds over 60 U.S. patents and has been recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher from 2018 to 2024, with more than 500 publications, 84,000 citations, and an H-index of 134 according to the AD Science Index.

Lim Chwee Teck
Lim Chwee Teck

National University of Singapore

Lim Chwee Teck is NUS Society Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the National University of Singapore and Director of the Institute for Health Innovation and Technology (iHealthtech). His research focuses on human disease mechanobiology and the development of microfluidic and wearable technologies for disease diagnosis and precision therapy. Lim’s work bridges engineering, biology and medicine to translate fundamental discoveries into healthcare technologies, including lab-on-chip diagnostics and flexible biomedical devices. He has authored more than 500 scientific publications and is also an entrepreneur who has founded several spin-off companies to commercialise biomedical innovations.
Deji Akinwande
Deji Akinwande

University of Texas

Deji Akinwande is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and holds the Cockrell Family Regents Chair in Engineering. His research focuses on nanoelectronics and emerging electronic materials, particularly two-dimensional materials such as graphene and other atomically thin semiconductors for flexible electronics, sensors and advanced computing technologies. Akinwande’s work explores device innovations that translate nanomaterials from laboratory discovery to practical applications in electronics and telecommunications. He is a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and a Fellow of several major scientific societies.
Taewoo Lee
Taewoo Lee

Seoul National University

Taewoo Lee is Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Seoul National University and is also affiliated with the university’s programs in chemical and biological engineering and bioengineering. His research focuses on advanced electronic materials and devices, including organic semiconductors, perovskite materials, and flexible electronics for applications in displays, sensors and neuromorphic systems. Lee’s work has contributed significantly to the development of next-generation optoelectronic technologies, particularly perovskite light-emitting devices and organic electronic systems. He previously held faculty positions at POSTECH and has been recognised as a Fellow of several international scientific societies.
Saptarshi Das
Saptarshi Das

The Pennsylvania State University

Saptarshi Das is an Ackley Professor of Engineering at Penn State University with expertise in 2D materials, neuromorphic computing, and smart sensing. Based in the Millennium Science Complex, he holds appointments in ESM, MATSE, and EECS, leading research on biomimetic, energy-efficient electronics.