Bio-electromagnetics, BioEM, is an interdisciplinary field of research, which deals with the interaction of electromagnetic fields in all frequency ranges with biological organisms. Such study is important and applicable in developing new treatments or improving the already existing ones, establishing new biosensing mechanisms as well as determining the safety of newly developed electronic devices. Accordingly, there are already quite some research groups active in one or another area of BioEM.

The ATE-BioEM Center at the General and Theoretical Electrical Engineering (ATE), Faculty of Engineering, University of Duisburg-Essen, is a research center focused on investigating the interaction of electromagnetic fields with biological organisms in a broad frequency range for different applications.

At the moment five projects are active within the center namely: 6GEM, MicroBioEM, QDMBiosensor, TriCoder, and THz-Netzwerker, each dealing with an aspect of electromagnetic radiation-biological organisms’ interaction. Diverse aspects of such interactions are investigated from determining the exposure limit under a given radiation to environmental monitoring of plants and insects as well as developing new concepts for ultra-sensitive biosensors.

Mission: The ATE-BioEM center is a recently established research group with the mission of providing better understanding of electromagnetic fields interaction with biological organisms. We are proud to be one of the first research centers to study the interaction of electromagnetic fields specially in 5G, 6G, and THz ranges with biological organisms other than humans such as insects and plants, in order to both determine the insect’s exposure limit in the mentioned frequency ranges and also employing THz frequency band for environmental monitoring.

The interaction of electromagnetic radiation with human skin and even at a single cell level; virtual microdosimetry; is another active area in the center aiming to perceive the location of electromagnetic field absorption at subcellular level. The acquired knowledge will be then adopted to develop modern biosensors, namely for early-stage label-free cancer diagnosis.

Vision: The center aims to become one of pioneering research centers in the field of BioEM, equipped with the state-of-the-art measurement and characterization techniques, capable of developing new environmental monitoring techniques, and new biosensing concepts. Additionally, the center intents to bridge between biologist and electrical engineers in terms of establishing new interdisciplinary fields of research applicable in biology, while the engineers can provide the solutions for a given biology application.