IT IS Foundation (IT'IS Foundation)

A Far-Sighted History 1999. The Euro currency was introduced. The Mars Polar Lander was launched. The first nonstop balloon flight around the world was completed in 20 days by Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones. The world awaited the consequences of the Y2K bug. And the work of the Foundation for Research on Information Technologies in Society (IT’IS) began. Nearly two decades later, the research activities of IT’IS still reflect its vision of making a tangible difference in people’s lives through the safe and beneficial application of electromagnetic (EM) energy in health and information technologies. Through unrelenting dedication and effort, undisputed, long-term, stable, and harmonized standards for wireless devices were established; both rigorous and scientifically sound procedures to demonstrate compliance, and novel and sophisticated clinical tools for the treatment of cancerous tumors were developed; and the understanding of EM-tissue interactions has been expanded. New research initiatives, the continued development of core competencies in experimental and computational electromagnetics, and expansion of expertise in biology and medical technology have allowed the Foundation to improve its research productivity and further accelerate the discovery process. Computational simulation of EM exposure in rodents07exprobe The Formative Years The IT’IS Foundation was founded on November 17, 1999 and established as a non-profit, independent research institute through the initiative and support of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EHT) Zurich, the global wireless communication industry, and several government agencies. The aim was to create a flexible and dynamic research institution capable of addressing the research needs of society in the explosively expanding field of information technologies. In thoughtfully choosing the strategies to facilitate the Foundation’s future accomplishments, a plan was implemented to maximize impact by combining people and talent to address the needs in the field of bioelectromagnetics. The selection of both a diverse group of board members from academia, industry, and government and outstanding young scientists was critical to ensure the high quality of research, to build global alliances with the research community, and to secure sufficient funding. It was also essential to establish a clear separation between sources of funding and the results of individual research projects, to guarantee both the credibility and the longevity of the Foundation. From the beginning, IT’IS endeavored to provide a proactive, creative, and innovative research environment for the cultivation of sound science and good education. Results are widely disseminated to the scientific community and the general public through peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings, television interviews, and white papers. IT'IS annual report 2004IT'IS annual report 2005 Realizing the Vision By 2005, IT’IS had become an emerging competence center in the field of bioelectromagnetics. The Foundation prides itself on being at the forefront of important trends and revelations that continue to shape bioelectromagnetic research today. Our interdisciplinary approach has allowed us to seamlessly expand our research endeavors to meet shifting research interests and to explore exciting new applications of electromagnetic fields (EMF). Although concern about EMF exposure on human health originated decades ago, the advent of mobile phones ignited new interest among the public, industry, and government sectors to identify potential adverse effects. The limited financial and human resources and infrastructure of the Foundation in the early years imposed sharply focused and highly selective research directions. For the first four years, we maintained focus in two critical areas: 1) Health Risk Assessments and 2) Measurement and Computational Techniques for Electromagnetic Analysis. Emphasis was initially placed on developing high-quality exposure systems to investigate the effects of EMF exposure on human health in large collaborative studies, such as the EU FP5 PERFORM A and REFLEX studies and the industry-funded PERFORM B and C projects. A prior collaboration with the Sleep Laboratory of the University of Zurich on changes in sleep electroencephalograms (EEG) after radiofrequency (RF) exposure also continued at the newly opened Foundation and yielded unexpected, interesting, yet puzzling results. The REFLEX project also revealed unanticipated positive results, namely the effects of extremely low frequency (ELF) and RF exposures on gene expression stability. The Foundation actively initiated confirmation studies on the positive ELF findings of the University of Basel. After garnering positive results, these ELF confirmation studies became part of the Swiss National Research Program NRP57 and SEAWIND, an EU-funded project of the 7th Framework Programme that commenced in December 2009 under the leadership of the IT’IS Foundation with the goal of investigating the positive RF findings.