Four contributions from our research group were presented at ACM NanoCom 2023 which we also had the great pleasure of hosting here at Warwick! Thanks to an agreement between ACM and the University of Warwick, all four are freely available with Open Access from the ACM Digital Library.

The regular paper Biophysical Model for Signal-Embedded Droplet Soaking into 2D Cell Culture presents our group's first experimental work with bacteria where we develop a model for liquid droplets soaking into an agar plate. We derive a channel response to describe the molecule dynamics within the agar and the molecules that get absorbed by bacteria growing on top of the agar. We use a basic experiment to estimate the droplet soaking parameters and use particle simulations for the diffusion and absorption processes. The paper was co-authored with Christophe Corre (University of Warwick School of Life Sciences and Department of Chemistry).

Furthermore, we presented 3 poster papers:

1. Role of Channel Capacity in Biofilm introduces the usefulness of the notion of communication channel capacity in biofilms. Yanahan Paramalingam was the first author.
2. Generalized Model of Neurite Trafficking presents a Markov chain model for molecules being transported inside vesicles along the axon of a neuron. This paper was co-authored with Anne Straube (Warwick Medical School). Mahir Taher was the first author.
3. On the Order Statistics of Chemical Kinetics and Their Role in Molecular Communication presents our first work to model the timing of chemical reaction events.

Our paper "Diffusive Molecular Communication with a Spheroidal Receiver for Organ-on-Chip Systems" was accepted for presentation at IEEE ICC this May in Rome, Italy. This paper will be our group's first publication focused on organ-on-chip systems. We model an organoid of cells as a receiver and derive the channel response from a nearby point transmitter. We approximate the porous organoid receiver as a sphere with a lower diffusion coefficient and show its impact on the received signal. This paper was co-authored with Hamidreza Arjmandi and Mitra Rezaei from our group, in addition to Mohamad Zoofaghari (Yazd University, Iran) and our SIMBA project collaborators at AstraZeneca Sweden (Kajsa Kanebratt, Liisa Vilen, David Janzen, and Peter Gennemark).

We're pleased to announce that we will be hosting the 10th ACM International Conference on Nanoscale Computing and Communication (ACM NanoCom) here at the University of Warwick. The conference will be held from 20-22 September, 2023. Adam Noel is serving as General Chair along with Andrew Eckford (York University, Canada). Other local organisers include Hamidreza Arjmandi as Local Organization Chair, Matthew Higgins as Sponsorship Chair, and Yanahan Paramalingam as Social Media Chair.

ACM NanoCom 2023 is endorsed by the Technical Committee on Molecular, Biological, and Multi-Scale Communications of the IEEE Communications Society.

The Call for Papers is now available. Full details can be found here. The initial deadline for Regular Papers is 9 April 2023.

Submissions are now open for the 2019 IEEE Global Communications Conference (IEEE GLOBECOM). I am chairing the track on Molecular, Biological and Multi-Scale Communications. Submissions are due 15 April 2019 via https://edas.info/N25091. You can find a text version of the call in the detail of this news item, or get the PDF from here.

Our paper "On the Analysis of Bacterial Cooperation with a Characterization of 2D Signal Propagation" was posted to arXiv. This paper derives new results on diffusion with degradation over a 2D environment and applies them to a model for bacteria quorum sensing. We then use approximations to estimate the expected density of cooperating bacteria. The paper was co-authored with Yuting Fang, Nan Yang, and Andrew W. Eckford, and submitted to IEEE ICC 2019.

I will be helping to deliver a tutorial on molecular communication at this year's IEEE GLOBECOM in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The full title is "Molecular Communication: Methods, Simulations, and Experiments" It will be presented with Andrew Eckford (York), Yansha Deng (KCL), and Nariman Farsad (Stanford). The tutorial will be held on Sunday, 9 December from 2pm-5:30pm.

Abstract: This tutorial introduces the emerging field of molecular communication wherein chemical signals are used to connect "tiny" machines such as living cells, synthetic biological devices and swarms of micro-scale robots. The tutorial begins with an overview of molecular communication systems and how they are modeled; each has a Transmitter, the Propagation Channel, and the Receiver, just as in a conventional communication system. Specific channel and noise models are presented and the derivation of channel impulse responses is discussed. Signal processing via chemical and genetic circuits is described. An overview and demonstration of specialized simulation tools is provided. The tutorial concludes with a discussion of the recent experimental implementations of molecular communication, and some of the most important open problems in this exciting new area.

My section of the tutorial will be on simulation methods, and will include a demonstration of the AcCoRD simulator.

To see about about the tutorial, including registration, please see here: http://globecom2018.ieee-globecom.org/program/tutorials#tut10

The following papers papers were accepted for presentation at the 2018 Global Communications Conference (IEEE GLOBECOM):

• "Modeling Duct Flow for Molecular Communication" (link to arXiv version). This paper was co-authored with Wayan Wicke, Tobias Schwering, Arman Ahamdzadeh, Vahid Jamali, and Robert Schober.

• "Transceiver Observations in Asymmetric and Symmetric Diffusive Molecular Communication Systems". This paper was co-authored with Lanting Zha, Yansha Deng, Maged Elkashlan, and Arumugam Nallanathan.

GLOBECOM will be in Abu Dhabi from 9-13 December, 2018.

The paper "A New Simulation Algorithm for Absorbing Receiver in Molecular Communications" (link to arXiv version) was accepted for presentation at the 2018 International Workshop on Molecular, Biological and Multiscale Communications, which is being held in conjunction with the IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication and Networking (IEEE SECON). This paper was co-authored with Yiran Wang and Nan (Jonas) Yang. The workshop will be in Hong Kong from 11-13 June, 2018.