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9th International Forum on Blast Injury Countermeasures (IFBIC 2025)

May 7 (Wed) – 9 (Fri), 2025
Tokyo, Japan
https://www.ifbic2025.jp

Announcement and Call for Papers

Objective and Scope

In recent years, explosive device attacks have become increasingly frequent, not only on battlefields and in conflict regions but also in urban areas during peacetime due to terrorism. These attacks result in a significant number of blast injury victims. The US Department of Defense categorizes blast injuries using the Taxonomy of Injuries from Explosive Devices (as outlined in DoDD 6025.21E), which organizes injuries into five groups based on their temporal occurrence following an explosion:

1. Primary injuries result from the blast shock wave.
2. Secondary injuries are caused by penetrating fragments accelerated by the blast.
3. Tertiary injuries result from accelerative loading or blunt impact to tissues.
4. Quaternary injuries include dermal burns and toxic gas inhalation.
5. Quinary injuries involve contamination by nuclear, chemical, or biological agents.

Primary injuries peculiar to blast shockwave exposure include mild blast-induced traumatic brain injury (bTBI), hearing loss, ocular injury, and lung injury. All body systems are vulnerable to secondary injuries due to penetrating fragments and tertiary injuries due to acceleration and blunt force trauma.

International cross-disciplinary collaboration is essential to investigate the physical causes of blast injury, characterize the vulnerability of anatomical systems and their functions to blasts, and develop means to prevent, mitigate, and treat blast injuries. Countermeasures may include personal protective equipment, weapons and vehicle systems engineered for safety, tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) for injury prevention, and medical interventions tailored to the specific needs of blast injuries.

The International Forum on Blast Injury Countermeasures (IFBIC) began as a Technical Information Exchange Forum between Japan and the United States. It aimed to share broad knowledge and expertise, as well as national experiences and evidence-based approaches for blast injuries. The first three Japan-US Technical Information Exchange Forums on Blast Injury (JUFBI) were held in June 2016, April 2017, and May 2018, all in Tokyo. At the end of JUFBI 2018, the organizing committee decided to rename the forum to the International Forum on Blast Injury Countermeasures to reflect expanding participation from nations such as Australia, Canada, Germany, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. IFBIC 2024 was held in McLean, Virginia, USA.

These meetings have been highly productive, involving active and fruitful discussions, the exchange of creative ideas on a wide spectrum of blast injuries, identification of critical issues in experimental and computational studies of blast-induced injuries, and the creation of new partnerships for joint research to address the many scientific and technical challenges facing the field.

Building on these successful meetings, the next IFBIC will be held from 7 to 9 May 2025 at Keio Plaza Hotel in Tokyo, Japan.

Objectives for the 9th Forum

1. Assemble an international forum focused on multi-disciplinary science and medicine to enhance our understanding of blast injury and its countermeasures from bench to bedside.
2. Achieve a mutual understanding of international efforts in blast injury research.
3. Identify knowledge gaps and overlapping efforts requiring collaborative research.
4. Increase understanding, promote further collaboration, and share information to improve prevention, clinical diagnosis, and treatment across the spectrum of blast-related injuries.

Meeting Agenda: The meeting agenda includes the following broad topic areas. Innovative research beyond this topic list will also be considered:

1. Blast exposure monitoring, epidemiology, and environmental hazards:
   1. Clinical prevalence of various blast injuries categorized by context, anatomy, and severity.
   2. Blast energy/physics/waveforms, reflections, effects of different media (e.g., air, water, solid material).
   3. Unique environments for blasts (e.g., space, high altitude, subterranean, underwater).
   4. Blast sensor engineering, testing and evaluation, fidelity, usability.
   5. Correlation of blast sensing with clinical outcomes.
   6. Use of multiple sensors to reconstruct blast phenomena.
   7. Stimulus differences between operational and training environments.
   8. Conditions specific to Special Operations.
2. Overview of participating nations' major efforts
3. Translational/Operational related blast efforts
4. National efforts for translating research into policy (e.g., individual countries, NATO, etc.)
5. Emerging combined blast effects and related injuries
6. Primary blast injury (direct shockwave effects):
   1. Experimentally derived injury risk criteria for anatomical structures and functions, including brain, ocular, auditory, and lung.
   2. Predicted incapacitation due to blast injuries (e.g., loss of neuromuscular control, reduced sensory or cognitive function, reduced respiration).
7. Secondary (penetrating ballistic fragments) and tertiary (acceleration and blunt force) blast injuries:
   1. Experimentally derived injury risk criteria for anatomical structures and functions.
   2. Predicted incapacitation due to blast injuries (e.g., loss of musculoskeletal force).
   3. Wound ballistics.
8. Infections related to blast injuries (e.g., wounds):
   1. Wound infection management and prolonged care.
9. Long-term, cumulative, and chronic symptoms due to blast exposure:
   1. Brain: aberrant protein expression and accumulation (e.g., phosphorylated Tau).
   2. Brain: chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)-like symptoms.
   3. Brain: correlation and comorbidity with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
   4. Effect of cumulative subclinical (non-diagnosable) exposures to blast phenomena on all body systems.
   5. Effect of repeated clinical (diagnosable) exposures to blast phenomena on all body systems.
10. Diagnostic measures/biomarkers:
    1. Innovations in self-reported symptom inventories.
    2. Innovations in diagnostics based on clinical observations.
    3. Innovations in molecular markers of blast injury.
    4. Innovations in biomedical imaging measures of blast injury.
    5. Innovations in behavioral or functional tests for blast injury (including quantitative EEG).
11. Computational modeling and simulation of blast phenomena and blast injury
    1. Deformable finite element modeling (FEM) of stresses and strains
    2. Injury risk criteria applied to force-time histories from FEM
    3. Incapacitation risk criteria applied to injury predictions from FEM
    4. Shockwave modeling
    5. Innovations in coupling between computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and FEM
    6. Integration of computational models with blast sensors and other sensors (e.g., strain gauges or force transducers on cadavers or simulant manikins)
12. Application of artificial intelligence, machine learning
13. New technology and methods for blast injury research and medicine
14. Translating anatomical and functional scaling from

General Information

Meeting title:
The 9th International Forum on Blast Injury Countermeasures (IFBIC 2025)

Organized by:
U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC)
U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (USA CCDC DEVCOM-ARL)
National Defense Medical College Japan (NDMC)

A closed meeting for organizing committee members will be held on Monday, 12 May 2025 [Location To Be Determined].

Venue:
Keio Plaza Hotel, Room Fuji on the 42 floor (tentative) Japan
2-2-1 Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku-Ku, Tokyo 160-8330, Japan
Due to the Japanese Government's budget schedule, the venue will officially be announced later.

Abstract Submission

Please prepare your abstract using the provided template (download .DOCX 30 KB). Abstract submissions should be emailed directly to the IFBIC 2025 secretary office no later than close of business on 14 (Fri) February 2025, 5:00 p.m. U.S. Eastern Standard Time.

IFBIC 2025 Point of Contact e-mail:

ifbic2025@ndmc.ac.jp

All submitted abstracts will be reviewed by the IFBIC 2025 Program Committee and notification of abstract acceptance will be made by March 7 (Fri), 2025. NOTE: Priority will be given to submitted abstracts that contain original findings that have not been reported in previous IFBIC forums. Prior research reported at IFBIC may always be included as background information in support of original findings that are new to the IFBIC venue.

Registration

Pre-registration is required for all participants, and participation will be limited by venue capacity. Please pre-register through the conference website. The pre-registration deadline is April 2 (Wed), 2025. The pre-registration page will be open for registration on or after January 27 (Mon), 2025 at the conference website.

"On-site" meeting registration will not be offered.

There is no registration fee. An optional meeting expense charge of $85 USD (13,000 JPY) for Get-together & Conference dinner on 8 (Thu) May 2025 will be collected online as part of the pre-registration process.

Hotel Accommodations

For the participants who wish to stay at the Forum venue, the IFBIC 2025 organizing secretary office plans to reserve a block of rooms. Please visit the conference website and book the room(s) no later than April 18 (Fri) from the website.

Keynote and Tutorial Speakers

Keynote speakers will be announced closer to the meeting date.

Get-Together and Conference Dinner

Please join the evening Get-together & Conference dinner on May 8 (Thu), for more conversation, socializing, and networking. As described in the "Registration" section above, the social gathering expense is $85 USD (13,000 JPY) and is collected online as part of the pre-registration process. There will be no cancellation after May 1 (Thu).

Meeting Organization Committee

General Chair:

Matthew Scherer (DHA, USAMRDC, USA)

General Co-Chair:

Satoshi Tamura (NDMC, Japan)

Program Chair:

Raj Gupta (DHA, USAMRDC, USA)

Program Co-Chair:

Satoko Kawauchi (NDMC, Japan)

Members:

James Batchelor (Univ. of Southampton, UK)
Thomas DeGraba (NICoE, USA)
Toru Fujii (NDMC, Japan)
Steffen Grobert (Bundeswehr Office for Defence Planning, Germany)
Shashi Karna (USA DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory, USA)
Machiko Kawasaki (JGSDF Test & Evaluation Command, Japan)
Emrys Kirkman (DSTL, UK)
Nobuaki Kiriu (NDMC, Japan)
Yutaka Kodama (USA DEVCOM, Int'l l Tech Center-Pacific (ITC-PAC), USA)
Adam Lewis (DHA, USAMRDC, USA)
Izumi Nishidate (TUAT, Japan)
Thuvan Piehler (DHA, USAMRDC, USA)
Shunichi Sato (NDMC, Japan)
Akimasa Tashiro (NDMC, Japan)
Satoshi Tomura (NDMC, Japan)
Olivia Webster (DCPH-A, USA)
Therese West (USAMRDC, USA)

Meeting Secretaries:

Raj Gupta (USAMRDC, USA)
Yutaka Kodama (USA DEVCOM, Int'l l Tech Center-Pacific (ITC-PAC), USA)
Satoko Kawauchi (NDMC, Japan)
Izumi Nishidate (TUAT, Japan)

Event Point-of-Contact (POC):

IFBIC 2025 Organizing Secretariat (Abstract submission and General information)
ifbic2025@ndmc.ac.jp

IFBIC 2025 Secretariat: (Pre-registration, Participation of Get-Together and Conference Dinner, and Hotel accommodations)
ifbic2025@jtb.com

Contact/Questions

Satoko Kawauchi
Professor, Division of Bioinformation and Therapeutic Systems,
National Defense Medical College Research Institutes
3-2, Namiki, Tokorozawa-shi, Saitama 359-8513, Japan
Telephone: +81 (4) 2995-1252
Fax: +81 (4) 2991-1757
Email: satok-bits@ndmc.ac.jp

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