US Department of Defense
BLAST INJURY RESEARCH
COORDINATING OFFICE
Advancing Blast Injury Research to Protect and Heal Those Who Serve

Results From The 4th International Forum on Blast Injury Countermeasures (IFBIC 2019)

May 8-10, 2019

BIRCO held the 4th International Forum on Blast Injury Countermeasures (IFBIC 2019) at the MITRE Corporation in McLean, VA, on May 8-10. 2019. IFBIC is an international forum that evolved from the Japan-U.S. Technical Information Exchange Forums on Blast Injury (JUFBI). These meetings have been very productive, involving active and fruitful discussions and exchange of creative ideas on a broad spectrum of blast injuries; identifying critical issues involving experimental and computational studies of blast-induced injuries; and creating new partnerships on joint research explorations to address the many scientific and technical challenges facing the field.

The BIRCO Director and Deputy Director Co-Chair the IFBIC with their counterparts from the National Defense Medical College (NDMC) of the Japan Self-Defense Forces. The organizing committee includes representatives from the U.S. Army and agencies within the Japan Ministry of Defense. Nations that participated in this year's forum were the U.S., UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, and South Africa. The objective of IFBIC 2019 was to convene an international forum of blast injury research stakeholders to share information about ongoing research efforts, to identify knowledge gaps, and to facilitate research collaboration to improve prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of blast injuries. Presentations addressed many blast injury research topics including traumatic brain injury (TBI), underbody blast, wound infections, auditory injury, computational modeling, and blast exposure monitoring. On May 13, 2019, the IFBIC Organizing Committee convened in a closed session to discuss outcomes of IFBIC 2019 and to initiate planning for IFBIC 2020 which the NDMC will host in Tokyo in May 2020. IFBIC supports the Executive Agent's (EA) Congressionally-mandated responsibilities to promote partnerships, to facilitate collaborations, and to leverage the expertise of U.S. allies to accelerate the development and fielding of blast injury prevention and treatment strategies for Service members.

Download program agenda and abstracts (PDF icon 4 MB)

Last modified: 03-Apr-2023