Focused Sessions

Rapid progress in flexible, stretchable, and printable electronics is enabling new concepts for neuro-interfaces and wearable electrophysiology systems that can conform to soft tissue, maintain stable contact under motion, and support long-term, high-fidelity recording and stimulation. This includes soft and biocompatible electrode materials and structures for EEG/ECoG/EMG/ENG and peripheral nerve interfaces, skin-compatible dry/hydrogel/microneedle interfaces for low-impedance contact, robust packaging for reliability and safety, and hybrid integration of sensors, interconnects, and wireless modules in thin, lightweight form factors. Advancing these broad research areas requires coordinated innovations in materials, device architectures, scalable fabrication, and end-to-end system engineering tailored to real-world biomedical environments. This focused session will facilitate discussion of recent advances in wearable electrophysiology technologies and their biomedical translation. Examples include (but are not limited to) novel flexible/stretchable electrode arrays and biointegrated interfaces; low-noise and low-power readout electronics; wireless and body-area networking for continuous monitoring; multimodal sensing and closed-loop systems combining sensing with stimulation or assistive control; and emerging applications in brain–machine interfaces, neurorehabilitation, prosthetics/exoskeleton control, neuromodulation, and ambulatory digital health. In addition, the session welcomes machine-learning and biosignal-processing topics that are especially compatible with flexible/stretchable systems, such as robust decoding under motion and impedance drift, and multimodal fusion with co-located flexible sensors. Collectively, these efforts span device engineering, microfabrication, materials science, circuits, and intelligent systems, creating new opportunities for clinically relevant and scalable bioelectronic platforms.
 

This focused session will explore recent advances in ultra-thin, high-performance bioelectronics enabled by two-dimensional (2D) and atomically thin materials. Emphasis will be placed on how material thickness and unique electronic, mechanical, and interfacial properties enable new capabilities in bioelectronic sensing, stimulation, and biological interfacing. Topics include 2D material-based sensors, flexible and conformal device architectures, hybrid material systems, and strategies for achieving high signal fidelity, mechanical compliance, and stable biointerfaces. Applications include wearable and implantable health monitoring, neural and electrophysiological interfaces, and next-generation human-machine interaction. 

Soft and flexible devices and machines with compliant structures and integrated flexible electronics have emerged as a powerful class of systems for interacting with complex and dynamic environments. By combining mechanically compliant materials with distributed sensing and electronic functionality, these systems hold significant promise for advancing a broad range of engineering applications, including environmental monitoring, human–machine interaction, and biomedical technologies for disease diagnosis and therapeutic intervention. Recent advances in flexible and stretchable electronics have enabled soft actuators that are lightweight, compact, fast-responding, and responsive to diverse external stimuli. In parallel, flexible electronic sensors have been developed to capture rich, multimodal physical information from both the device and its environment, including deformation, force, temperature, humidity, and fluid flow. Together, these electronic and electromechanical innovations provide the foundation for next-generation soft machines with embedded intelligence. Despite this rapid progress, a critical gap remains in realizing intelligent soft machines capable of adaptive and autonomous interaction with their environments. This gap arises largely from persistent challenges in the seamless integration of flexible electronics with soft actuators and structures particularly at small scales, where constraints in materials compatibility, fabrication processes, signal integrity, power delivery, and long-term robustness become increasingly pronounced. This focused session aims to highlight recent advances in the design, fabrication, integration, and system-level implementation of intelligent soft machines enabled by flexible and stretchable electronics. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, soft and continuum robots that adapt their morphology, mechanical properties, and functional behaviors in response to environmental stimuli through tightly integrated sensing, actuation, and control. Emphasis will be placed on electronics–mechanics co-design, scalable manufacturing approaches, and application-driven demonstrations in environmental monitoring, human–machine interfaces, and biomedical systems.

Flexible electronics, including human–machine interfaces and soft robots, are revolutionizing modern technology. Central to this progress are gels, which offer a unique blend of biocompatibility and tunable charge transport. These attributes allow them to serve as high-performance sensing units, flexible electrolytes for energy storage, and active components in ambient energy harvesters. With publications in this area skyrocketing, our focused session emphasizes on the intersection of gels, sensing, and energy.