Dear Colleagues:

We would like to invite your contributions to a Special Issue on Drug
Delivery Automation for the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science
and Engineering. Please find enclosed Call-For-Papers. 

Call-for-papers
--------------------
Drug delivery has attracted many researchers in recent years from the
medical and engineering communities. It is one of the fastest growing
healthcare sectors. The goal of drug delivery is to control the
delivery, speed, and release of a drug without harming other tissues.
This requires consideration of drug side-effects as well as dynamics
and stability of the drug, which may be affected by delivery devices
and systems. Approaches for drug delivery have advanced from
traditional approaches to many new methods using novel materials and
new physical or chemical effects. Recently, the focus of drug delivery
system research has been moving towards the micro-/nano-scale.
Automation is essential for this new phase of drug delivery, and
requires efficient integration of automation principles with medical
practices. The central theme of this Special Issue is recent progress
in automation for drug delivery. This special issue aims to publish
original, significant and visionary automation papers describing
scientific methods and technologies that improve efficiency,
productivity, quality and reliability of drug delivery.  Special
attention will be paid to papers focusing on integrating automation
science with biological and medical principles, and to solve practical
drug delivery problems, such as MEMS and NEMS based systems for drug
delivery, distributed systems for drug delivery, sensor-network-based
systems for drug delivery.  Submissions of scientific results from
experts in academia and industry worldwide are strongly encouraged.
Topics to be covered include, but are not limited to,

· MEMS and NEMS based systems for drug delivery.
· Sensor network based systems for drug delivery.
· Intelligent distributed systems for drug delivery.
· Advanced systems for controlled drug release.
· Dynamics and control of drug delivery processes.
· Mathematical modelling of drug delivery processes.
· Control methods for micro-/nano-scale drug delivery.

Important Dates
---------------------------
· January 1, 2007: paper submission deadline.
· May 1, 2007: completion of the first round review.
· September 1, 2007: completion of the second round review.
· December 1, 2007: final manuscripts due.
· April 2008: tentative publication date.

Guest Editors
---------------------------
Mingjun Zhang
Agilent Technologies
mingjunzhang@ieee.org

Liwei Lin
University of California--Berkeley
lwlin@me.berkeley.edu

Channing Robertson
Stanford University
chanbo@stanford.edu

Chiming Wei
John Hopkins University
cmwei@jhmi.edu

T. C. Yih
University of Texas
tc.yih@utsa.edu

Babak Ziaie
Purdue University
bziaie@purdue.edu

Paper Submission
---------------------------
All papers are to be submitted through the IEEE's Manuscript Central
for Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering
http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/t-ase.  Please select "Special Issue"
under Manuscript Category of your submission.  All manuscripts must be
prepared according to the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and
Engineering publication guidelines
http://www.engr.uconn.edu/~ieeetase/. All papers will be reviewed
following the standard IEEE T-ASE review process.

Please address inquiries to mingjunzhang@ieee.org.

Best regards,

Mingjun Zhang on behalf of guest editors