The 14th annual NSTI Nanotechnology Conference and Trade Show was held this year in June 13th to 16th at the Hynes Convention Center, Boston, MA. The conference was co-located with TechConnect Summit 2011, Clean Technology 2011, Microtech 2011, Bio Nanotech 2011, TechConnect World 2011. Overall, Nanotech brought together over 5000 attendees and 300 exhibitors, while the resulting proceedings boast over 2000 pages of peer-reviewed micro and nanotechnology research.

Following a series of successful Special Issues (2007-2009), this year, a number of the conference authors were invited to submit a revised and extended account of their work. Invitations were issued to best papers selected from a number of symposia including: Novel MEMS & NEMS Devices: Design & Fabrication, Energy Storage, Grid & Transportation Technologies, MEMS & NEMS Fabrication, Devices & Applications, Micro & Nano Fluidics, Carbon Nano Structures & Devices, Energy Storage, Grid & Transportation Technologies, Bio Sensors, Diagnostics, Imaging & Instrumentation, Nano & Micro: Computational Methods, Simulation & Software Tools, Nanostructured Coatings, Surfaces & Films. These symposia brought together researchers from a number of disciplines to discuss topics ranging from theoretical developments and materials research, to design and fabrication of sensors and actuators, through to industrial applications of MEMS and NEMS sensors, devices and systems.

The works in this Special Issue are primarily inspired by the promise of: (a) smarter, smaller, and more complex systems that integrate micro and nano system technologies with intelligence, power and communication ability at the same micro or nano scale and (b) novel materials and manipulation at nano-scale to achieve high level functionality. Both areas above result in an increase in complexity, which poses new challenges to engineers when designing, modeling, and fabricating such integrated micro and nano systems. Papers are thus ranging from reports on end-to end real-life sensing applications and systems to those covering low-level physical aspects of micro and nano sensors and devices, their proof of concept, characterization, modeling and fabrication. Several samples of leading- edge device research are brought forth by this Special Issue, for example: phosphor thermometry, carbon nano-materials for optical applications, wideband RF nano switches, photon driven micromotors, anoreinforced composite materials with sensing capabilities, MEMS structures for residual stress measurement, nanowoven fibers for biosensing applications, microfluidic biosensors and more.

At systems and applications level, the papers selected for the issue report on several biosensors applications coupled with high level wireless sensing systems deployed to achieve enhanced safety in space and ground applications. Energy harvesting and wideband RF nano-switches are also put forth as future components for wireless sensing systems.

From the symposia submissions, 30 papers were selected and authors invited to submit extended versions of their conference publication. Of these, following peer-reviewing, 16 were selected to be published in this special issue.

We are very thankful both to the NSTI directors and Nanotech chairs (Dr. Matthew Laudon and Dr. Bart Romanovicz) and to the Sensors & Transducers editors for offering the opportunity to publish this Special Issue.

Enjoy!

Elena Gaur a, James Brusey, and Ramona Rednic

Author affiliation:

Elena Gaura, James P. Brusey, Ramona Rednic

Faculty of Engineering and Computing

Coventry University, UK

E-mail: e.gaura@coventry.ac.uk, j.baisey@coventry.ac.uk, aa6418@coventry.ac.uk

Received: 29 June 2011 /Accepted: 16 November 2011 /Published: 28 December 2011

Author affiliation:

Guest Editors:

Prof. Elena Gaura

Professor of Pervasive Computing

Director of Cogent Computing Applied Research Centre

Faculty of Engineering and Computing

Coventry University, UK

e gaura@co ventry .ac.uk

www.cogentcomputing.org

Expertise: Advanced Measurement Systems; Design and Deployment of RealLife Wireless Sensor Network end-to-end systems; Fault detection and management; Intelligent Sensors; MEMS Sensors; Sensor Fusion.

Elena received her BSc/MSc in Electrical Engineering in 1989/1991 (Technical University of Cluj Napoca, Romania), and her PhD in Intelligent Sensor Systems in 2000 (Coventry University). She was appointed as inaugural director of the Coventry University's Cogent Computing Applied Research Centre in 2006 (position she continues to hold) and awarded a Professorship in Pervasive Computing in 2009.

Over the course of her career, Elena has accrued a sturdy academic reputation in the area of MEMS based smart sensing systems in general and wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in particular. She is a very active disseminator of research both to the academic community and the industry, has over 140 refereed conference publications, 35 peer reviewed journal publications, is a frequent organiser of Smart Sensing and Wireless Sensor Networks events (stand alone conferences and tracks/sessions within larger events) and a successful editor of journal special issues and books (see list below). Elena is a member of several national and international advisory bodies in the areas of sensing and microsystems, including the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council College of Peers (www.epsrc.gov.uk) and the USA's Nano Science and Technology Institute (www.nsti.org). She chairs the UK Wireless Intelligent Sensing Interest Group (WiSIG) within the Electronics, Sensors, Photonics Knowledge Transfer Network and an expert reviewer for the European Commission on Wireless Sensing and the Internet of Things activities.

Presently her research is with the development of déployable WSNs for real -life applications with a focus on: i) robust end-to-end system design and technologies integration, ii) MEMS technology integration in multisensor systems, iii) real-time, model based sensor fusion and information extraction from wireless sensor networks, iv) integration of decision engines within poorly resourced WSN systems v) field phenomena event detection and representation using WSNs and vi) long lived, resource constrained WSNs.

Dn James P. Brusey

Senior Lecturer in Systems Engineering

Senior Research Fellow of Cogent Computing Applied Research Centre

Faculty of Engineering and Computing

Coventry University, UK

j brusey@coventry.ac.uk

www.cogentcomputing.org

James Brusey received the BSc degree in Computer Science and the PhD degree from RMIT University (Melbourne, Australia) in 1996, and 2003, respectively.

In 2002, he joined the Institute for Manufacturing, a division of the Cambridge University Engineering Department, as a Senior Research Fellow. Funding during this period included EU Framework 6 project, Cambridge-MIT Institute funding, and funding from the Auto-ID Centre. In 2007, he joined the Coventry University Cogent Computing Applied Research Centre as a Senior Lecturer and Senior Research Fellow. His current research interests include: Bayesian approaches to state estimation for Wireless Sensor Networks, middleware and design patterns for WSNs, sensor node placement optimisation. His PhD thesis entitled Learning Behaviours for Robot Soccer won the Australian Computer Science Association Award for best PhD thesis in 2004.

Ramona Rednic

Senior Research Assistant at Cogent Computing Applied Research Centre

Faculty of Engineering and Computing

Coventry University, UK

aa6418@coventry.ac.uk

www.cogentcomputing.org

Ramona Rednic received a BSc in Electronic Engineering in 2008 from the Technical University of Cluj Napoca, Romania. In autumn 2008, she joined the Cogent Computing Applied Research Centre and undertook a PhD in posture/activity classification using wearable accelerometers. Since 2010 she has been employed as a Senior Research Assistant supporting a variety of wireless sensing projects.

Her current research interests include: Real-time posture/activity classification using BSN's, wireless instrumentation for housing monitoring.