Draft:The Foundation for Research on Information Technologies in Society

Submission declined on 18 January 2024 by Brachy0008 (talk). There’s one external link in the body. If you would like to continue working on the submission, click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window. If you have not resolved the issues listed above, your draft will be declined again and potentially deleted. If you need extra help, please ask us a question at the AfC Help Desk or get live help from experienced editors. Please do not remove reviewer comments or this notice until the submission is accepted. Where to get help If you need help editing or submitting your draft, please ask us a question at the AfC Help Desk or get live help from experienced editors. These venues are only for help with editing and the submission process, not to get reviews. If you need feedback on your draft, or if the review is taking a lot of time, you can try asking for help on the talk page of a relevant WikiProject. Some WikiProjects are more active than others so a speedy reply is not guaranteed. How to improve a draft Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia – a basic overview on how to edit Wikipedia. Help:Wikitext – how to use the markup Help:Referencing for beginners – how to include references Wikipedia:Article development – how to develop your article Wikipedia:Writing better articles – how to improve your article third-party sources You can also browse Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Good articles to find examples of Wikipedia's best writing on topics similar to your proposed article. Improving your odds of a speedy review To improve your odds of a faster review, tag your draft with relevant WikiProject tags using the button below. This will let reviewers know a new draft has been submitted in their area of interest. For instance, if you wrote about a female astronomer, you would want to add the Biography, Astronomy, and Women scientists tags. Add tags to your draft Editor resources Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL Easy tools: Citation bot (help) | Advanced: Fix bare URLs Declined by Brachy0008 3 months ago. Last edited by Citation bot 16 days ago. Reviewer: Inform author. Resubmit Please note that if the issues are not fixed, the draft will be declined again.

Submission declined on 30 November 2023 by Cabrils (talk). This draft's references do not show that the subject qualifies for a Wikipedia article. In summary, the draft needs multiple published sources that are: in-depth (not just brief mentions about the subject or routine announcements) reliable secondary strictly independent of the subject Make sure you add references that meet all four of these criteria before resubmitting. Learn about mistakes to avoid when addressing this issue. If no additional references exist, the subject is not suitable for Wikipedia. Declined by Cabrils 4 months ago.

Submission declined on 29 May 2023 by Scope creep (talk). Article is full of external links in the body, which are illegal. Declined by Scope creep 10 months ago.

Submission declined on 3 January 2023 by DoubleGrazing ( reliable sources. Reliable sources are required so that information can be verified. If you need help with referencing, please see Referencing for beginners and Citing sources. Declined by DoubleGrazing 15 months ago.

Submission declined on 9 December 2022 by Theroadislong (talk). This submission appears to read more like an advertisement than an entry in an encyclopedia. Encyclopedia articles need to be written from a neutral point of view, and should refer to a range of independent, reliable, published sources, not just to materials produced by the creator of the subject being discussed. This is important so that the article can meet Wikipedia's verifiability policy and the notability of the subject can be established. If you still feel that this subject is worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia, please rewrite your submission to comply with these policies. Declined by Theroadislong 16 months ago.

• Comment: Reviewers, please see the ongoing discussion with the submitter on my my Talk page. Also noting the submitter's good faith postings on the draft's Talk page. Cabrils (talk) 22:15, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

• Comment: Well done on creating the draft, and it may potentially meet the relevant requirements (including
  notability of the subject. You may also wish to leave a note for me on my talk page and I would be happy to reassess. Cabrils (talk
  ) 00:57, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

• Comment: The number of items in the 'External links' section is far too great, and not in line with
  WP:EL. Please reduce to at most a few, ideally only one or two. DoubleGrazing (talk
  ) 10:57, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

• Comment: For establishing notability per
  WP:GNG, and to save having to sift through 35 (!) references, please highlight the three strongest sources in terms of meeting the GNG standard. Thank you. DoubleGrazing (talk
  ) 10:56, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

• Comment: Far too much of the content is unreferenced — where is all this information coming from? You should only summarise what reliable published sources have said, and from that it follows that every material statement should be clearly traceable to such a source. DoubleGrazing (talk) 10:55, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

• Comment: we don't use any external links in the body of an article. Theroadislong (talk) 15:13, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

This article contains paid contributions. It may require content policies, particularly neutral point of view. Please discuss further on the talk page .

The Foundation for Research on Information Technologies in Society (IT'IS) is a

IT'IS has links to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich)^[2] and the global wireless communications industry (e.g., the Mobile Manufacturers Forum (MMF) and GSMA), and has received research support from Swiss,^[3] European,^[4] and U.S.^[5] funding agencies.

IT'IS is active in working groups of international standards organizations such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), and the Cellular Telephone Industries Association (CTIA), is involved in the formulation of safety standards for the wireless industries, and provides regulatory advice regarding the biological effects of EM energy.^[6]

Research at the IT'IS Foundation is in the area of computational life sciences to expand the scientific basis for applications of EM energy in wireless information technologies.^[7] IT'IS develops tools and methods used by the manufacturers of mobile phones and other wireless devices to assess the absorption of electromagnetic (EM) fields by living tissue.^[8]

IT'IS employs about 50 people and shares facilities in Zurich with other members of the Zurich43 (Z43) partnership, which includes the commercial R&D units Schmidt & Partner Engineering AG (SPEAG),^[9] Zurich MedTech AG (ZMT),^[10] and TI Solutions AG.^[11]

History

The IT’IS Foundation was established on November 22, 1999 with the mission to engineer novel and accurate EM measurement methods to be able to provide science-based regulatory advice regarding interactions of EM fields with living tissues. The first foundation board consisted of ETH Zurich professors Ralf Hütter, Albert Kündig, Wolfgang Fichtner, and Niels Kuster, as well as

During the first decade, IT'IS researchers focused on creating the scientific knowledge base and tools to assess potential health hazards of exposure to EM fields, developing experimental and computational methods, as well as instrumentation and procedures to reliably assess the specific absorption rate (SAR) induced in humans using wireless communication devices.^[12] Working closely with engineering partner SPEAG and international research organizations, IT’IS researchers developed and fabricated exposure systems, along with dosimetry and quality assurance (QA) methods, and collaborated on several national and international research programs designed to investigate potential adverse biological effects of EM field exposure.^[13] The IT’IS Foundation designed and fabricated exposure setups used in a large National Toxicology Program (NTP) study funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) on the carcinogenicity due to exposure to the EM radiation emitted by mobile phone signals.^[14] Several research articles^{[15][16][17][18]} were published on the results of a long-term collaboration with the sleep laboratory of the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology of the University of Zurich on how radiofrequency (RF) exposure affects the sleep and the awake electroencephalogram (EEG). Together with the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA), IT’IS developed a group of anatomically detailed 3D human computational phantoms — the Virtual Family models, consisting of an adult male, adult female, and two children — based on high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data of healthy volunteers^[19]

In 2005, the IT'IS Foundation presented its research achievements as part of the 150-year anniversary exhibit of the ETH Zurich, Welcome Tomorrow,^[20] at the Zurich main train station. Deeper involvement in medical technology research ultimately led to the founding of the spin-off commercial firm ZMT in 2006.

2010−2019

In 2010, the IT'IS Foundation was featured in Technoscope,^[21] the "technical magazine for youth and the youthful" of The Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW), an independent organization for the promotion of the engineering sciences. A 2010 IT'IS publication on human exposure to EM fields from energy saving light bulbs was part of a report on the safety of fluorescent bulbs aired by the Canadian investigative newsmagazine television program 16:9 The Bigger Picture.^[22]

The foundation continued to develop computational phantoms and, in 2010, more child anatomical models — the Virtual Classroom — were added to the Virtual Family. The addition of Glenn (an elderly male model) and Fats (an obese male model) further extended the model library of computational phantoms, now known as the Virtual Population (ViP).^[23] Together with the FDA, IT'IS developed a multimodal imaging-based detailed anatomical (MIDA)^[24] model of the human head and neck, which includes representations of eyes, ears, and deep brain structures, as well as several muscles, bones and skull layers, arteries and veins, cranial nerves, and salivary glands. The models are freely available for use in non-commercial projects by research groups around the world.

During its second decade, IT’IS research broadened into applications of computational physics in precision medicine. IT'IS was awarded funding from CTI (now INNOSUISSE) computational medicine with the development of Sim4Life,^[25] which was later commercialized by partner ZMT. The project Sim4Life CAPITALIS^[26] was nominated for the CTI Swiss Medtech Award in 2015.^[27] IT'IS partners with spin-off ZMT for licensing the latest version of the ViP models as part of the Sim4Life simulation platform.

IT’IS co-organized the 2015 meeting of the European Society for Hyperthermic Oncology (ESHO2015)^[28] on hyperthermia research. The IT'IS Foundation – together with the Competence Center for Personalized Medicine in Zurich^[29] – organized the Latsis Foundation Symposium^[30] in 2016, with the title "Personalized Medicine: Challenges and Opportunities" and with additional funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation.^[31]

In 2017, the IT'IS Foundation was selected by the NIH to develop the online simulation platform o²S²PARC – Open Online Simulations for Stimulating Peripheral Activity to Relieve Conditions,^[5] a project funded through the NIH Common Fund’s SPARC program^[32] to establish a Modeling and Simulation (SIM-) Core within the SPARC Data and Resource Center.

IT'IS continued to design and produce exposure systems used in investigations to quantify observed biological effects of cells, animals, and humans exposed to EM radiation. The results of the NTP study of rodents on the risks of exposure to wireless devices were published in 2018,^[33] and IT'IS representatives participated in the peer review of the technical reports.^[34] IT’IS investigations on 5G exposure led to the development of novel measurement instrumentation and phase reconstruction algorithms to analyze the power density in the very close near-field of transmitters,^[35] which has been commercialized by SPEAG. Research into the absorption of millimeter-waves by the skin and the resulting temperature increase^[36] draws attention to potential hazards associated with exposure to 5G wireless devices, work that has been covered in the Swiss press.^[37]

IT'IS also performs research in the area of MRI technology to analyze the risks of RF exposure, especially in the context of medical implant safety.^[38][39][40], and since 2017, on temporal interference (TI)^[41] and has founded a new spin-off company, TI Solutions AG, in Zurich.

2020−

With NIH funding, IT'IS continues to manage the o²S²PARC platform, which has a growing number of users and hosted projects. The computational modeling pipeline developed by IT’IS was a key component in clinical studies to use spinal cord neuromodulation to restore trunk and leg motor function in patients after complete paralysis.^[42][43] IT'IS researchers co-authored a 2022 research article on the use of TI stimulation for the treatment of epilepsy^[44] and developed the Temporal Interference Planning (TIP) tool, which is used to optimize electrode placement and stimulation conditions for targeted TI stimulation. Two research papers on the use of TI deep-brain stimulation in human subjects, co-authored by IT'IS researchers in collaboration with the EPFL^[45] and the UK Dementia Research Institute,^[46] were published in Nature Neuroscience in October 2023.

Major projects

Seed funding for the IT'IS Foundation was provided in part by SPEAG and the Mobile Manufacturers Forum (MMF). Partners SPEAG and now also ZMT continue to be reliable sources of funding. Other major funding has been obtained through competitive applications to various Swiss (CH), European Union (EU), and international scientific project funding instruments. Selected major research projects are listed below.

The REFLEX project controversy

The aim of the EU FP5 REFLEX project — Risk Evaluation of Potential Environmental Hazards From Low Frequency Electromagnetic Field Exposure Using Sensitive In Vitro Methods — was to apply advanced methods and procedures developed in toxicology and molecular biology to investigate the basic mechanisms of cellular and sub-cellular responses to exposure to EM energy. The coordinator of the REFLEX consortium was Prof. Franz Adlkofer of the VERUM Foundation; there were 8 biological laboratory partners to perform in vitro experiments, for which the IT'IS Foundation developed the exposure systems in line with its core competencies. Soon after publication of findings from the REFLEX study,^{[49][50][51][52]} allegations of data falsification, data fabrication, and general scientific misconduct were made against project participants, including the IT'IS Foundation.^[53][54] The assertions, which persisted for more than a decade, were laid to rest by a German court of appeals, whereby the author of the unfounded allegations, was ordered to cease and desist his attacks on the REFLEX findings.^[55]

References