(Yicai) July 26 -- The BCI Meeting, the top academic conference in the global brain-computer interfaces field, will be held in China for the first time at the end of this year.

The BCI Society, one of the most influential academic institutions in the field, and the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute, a non-profit organization set up by Chinese entrepreneur Chen Tianqiao, will co-organize the event to be held in Shanghai from Dec. 6 to 7, the two jointly announced on July 24.

Many leading international scientists will gather in Shanghai to discuss and exchange the latest advancements and trends in the cutting-edge technology field, the organizers noted. This is the first time in the 25-year history of the BCI Meeting that it will be held in Asia, they pointed out.

Speakers at this year's event include neuroscientist Grégoire Courtine and neurosurgeon Jocelyne Bloch from Swiss' Defitech Center for Interventional Neurotherapies, associate professor Robert Gaunt from the University of Pittsburgh's physical medicine and rehabilitation department, professor Hong Bo from Tsinghua Universitys' biomedical engineering department, and other experts from China, the US, France, Canada, and Germany, according to the website of the BCI Society.

Since the first BCI Meeting in New York in 1999, the event has become a benchmark academic conference in the BCI field. Last year, it was held in Brussels, attracting nearly 500 scientists from 39 countries and regions worldwide.

The TCCI was established in 2016 with an investment of USD1 billion by Chen Tianqiao, founder of Chinese online games firm Shanda Group, and his wife Chrissy Luo. The California-based institute focuses on advancing critical research in brain discovery, brain disease treatment, and brain function development.

There were over 500 representative BCI companies globally as of March last year, according to a report by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology released last December. China and the US had more than 100 firms each, most among all countries, followed by Canada, the United Kingdom, and Israel.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Martin Kadiev