Molecular communications is an interdisciplinary research area promising significant achievements in strategic societal fields, such as education, medicine, and bio-related industry. In order to design biological nano-machines having the capabilities of communicating at the nanoscales by the use of biological mechanisms , it is necessary to identify and model the basic communication entities and their interconnection. This tutorial shows the simulation techniques developed in the framework of the EU project CIRCLE. The CIRCLE approach is aimed to overcome the difficulties deriving form the high multidisciplinary nature of the Molecular Communications research. In particular, communication impairments not only affect researchers with different backgrounds, but it is also an obstacle in the integration of different software tools. For this reason, a specific markup language, called Molecular Communication Markup Language (MolComML) has been developed. This tutorial illustrates the architecture and the usage of the MolComML, its integration in the BiNS2 simulator of Molecular Communication Systems, and its capabilities of exploiting the high level of parallelism of modern multi-core computer architectures. Setup and execution of the simulation of different case studies will be demonstrated.  

Gianluca Reali is Associate Professor at the University of Perugia since 2005. He coordinates the Networks and Services Research Groups of the Department of Engineering. He is also Director of the post-graduate Master program in Data Science. He received his M.S. degrees in Electronic Engineering and his Ph.D. in Telecommunications from the University of Perugia in 1991 and 1997, respectively. He was visiting researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1999. The main areas of his research activities are in the fields of Telecommunication Networks and Computer Science, in particular IP networking (Architectures, QoS, pricing, resource discovery, network management), Distributed Computing, Service Deployment Architectures, overlay networks (Content Distribution Networks, SDN/NFV, Active Caching, Cloud Computing), and Molecular Communications systems. Previous reseach activites included Satellite Communications, Wireless and Cellular Communication Systems (Spread Spectrum based access protocols, channel multipath equalization), Digital Video and Audio Broadcasting, LAN and Positioning and Navigation Systems.

Molecular communication theory is a discipline in communication systems engineering that studies how information can be encoded and propagated through chemical molecules. The implicit biocompatibility and nanoscale feasibility of molecular communication make it a promising paradigm for engineering the interconnections between embedded computing systems able to not only directly interact with biological processes, but also utilize these same processes as their building blocks, i.e., the Internet of Bio-Nano Things. The first part of this tutorial will focus on a broad introduction of molecular communication as a research field, and its intersection with biochemistry, with highlights from systems and synthetic biology, neuroscience, and bioinformatics. The second part of the tutorial will focus on the latest results and open challenges in the characterization of information flow through biological cells, and the engineering of novel communication components able to harness, control, and enhance this flow for future applications ranging from implantable and wearable device networking to the design of communication components in engineered cells.

Massimiliano Pierobon received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA, in 2013. Since August 2013, he is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), NE, USA, where he also holds a courtesy appointment at the Department of Biochemistry. He is the co-Editor in Chief of Nano Communication Networks (Elsevier) since July 2017, and an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Communications since 2013. Selected honors: 2011 Georgia Tech BWN Lab Researcher of the Year Award, 2013 IEEE Communications Letters Exemplary Reviewer Award, UNL CSE Upper and Graduate Level Teaching Award in 2016 and 2017, and 2017 IEEE INFOCOM Best Paper Award Runner-up Award. Dr. Pierobon is the lead PIs of the NSF project “TelePathy: Telecommunication Systems Modeling and Engineering of Cell Communication Pathways.” His research interests are in molecular communication theory, nanonetworks, intra-body networks, communication engineering applied to synthetic biology, and the Internet of Bio-Nano Things.

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