Professor Bruce Wheeler, President of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine in Biology Society (EMBS), reported a successful 36th Annual International Conference of the IEEE EMBS (EMBC; Chicago, August 26-30, 2014), with over 2700 attendees, 2800 presentations, 25 workshops and 40 specially organized sessions. Dr. Leroy Hood, of the Institute for Systems Biology, gave a spectacular keynote address on “Systems Medicine and Transformational Technologies and Strategies: A Revolution in Healthcare”.

Dr. Wheeler presented a talk on IEEE-EMBS Visions and American Perspectives in Health Informatics in a special symposium on Health Informatics during the conference. He also presided over the Executive and Administrative Committee meetings that preceded the conference. In addition to his emphasis on Health Informatics, his term in office has promoted a highly successful initiative for student conferences (Malaysia, the United Kingdom, Egypt, Canada and Chile), the revamping of the structure of the society’s technical committees, new initiatives across IEEE in the Life Sciences, new journals and EMBS Sumer Schools, growing numbers of student chapters, and an increasing commitment to diversity of all kinds across the EMBS, including gender and professional / translational biomedical engineering.