AUT's SIBER symposium returns for a fourth year, bridging biomedical engineering and industry in Auckland

The Fourth Symposium on Industrial-based Biomedical Engineering Research (SIBER) takes place on 1 September 2026, 9am to 5pm, at Auckland University of Technology's City Campus, in Room WZ416 of the WZ Building. According to the organiser's official listing, the 2026 edition focuses on "applying research and technology for societal good and delivering real impact to industry," bringing together researchers, industry leaders and academics to show how biomedical engineering translates into practical healthcare applications.

Now in its fourth year, SIBER is a national technical forum covering wearable health monitoring, medical imaging and diagnostics, digital health, AI and machine learning in healthcare, clinical engineering, biomechanics and biomaterials, telemedicine and mobile health, and industry-academic collaboration. Registration is free of charge, and accepted abstracts are published in the symposium booklet with a chance of extended publication in the ASME Journal of Medical Diagnostics and Therapy.

Who runs it

The symposium is hosted by the Institute of Biomedical Technologies (IBTec) at AUT and sponsored by the EMBS Chapter of IEEE's New Zealand North Section. IBTec is one of AUT's established research institutes, working across areas such as physiological measurement, restoring quality of life, and human phantom technology. The immediately prior edition, SIBER-25 (10 September 2025), was chaired by Professor Hamid GholamHosseini and Associate Professor Samaneh Madanian with a programme committee drawing in the University of Auckland and international partners, indicating a stable, repeat-running academic event rather than a one-off.

Who it's for

The audience is researchers, postgraduate students, academics and healthcare-industry professionals working at the intersection of engineering, medicine and med-tech commercialisation. It is a specialist scientific-congress audience: presenters submit one-page abstracts, and past editions have featured invited speakers from New Zealand med-tech companies.

The venue and logistics

AUT's City Campus sits in central Auckland on Wellesley Street East, adjacent to the Auckland CBD and within walking distance of the Aotea and Britomart transport hubs, giving delegates ready access to city-centre hotels, dining and public transport. Auckland Airport lies on the southern corridor roughly 30 minutes' drive from the city centre in typical conditions. As a compact single-day, single-room symposium, the event is modest in scale and self-contained on campus.

Why it matters for New Zealand MICE

SIBER is a small but recurring example of the academic-industry convergence events that anchor Auckland's knowledge-economy calendar. It draws national and some international participation to AUT's city campus, feeding the wider Auckland business-events ecosystem in the medical and scientific sector and reinforcing the city's positioning as New Zealand's hub for health-tech and biomedical research gatherings.