The past two decades have seen an explosion of ideas in the general field of nonlinear dynamics. In fact, it has become increasingly clear that areas as diverse as signal processing, communication, sensors, lasers, molecular motors, and biomedical anomalies have a common underlying thread: the dynamics that underpin these systems are inherently nonlinear. Yet, while there has been significant progress in the theory of nonlinear phenomena under an assortment of system boundary conditions and preparations, there exist comparatively few devices that actually take this rich behavior into account. In the presence of background noise (a given, for most practical applications), the underlying dynamic phenomena become even richer, with the noise actually mediating cooperative behavior that, when properly understood, can lead to significant performance enhancements; a striking example of this behavior occurs, for example, when the underlying dynamics undergoes a bifurcation from static to oscillating behavior when a control parameter is swept through a critical value. If properly understood, theoretically, the (suitably quantified) system response can be significantly enhanced near the onset of the bifurcation. Examples of this behavior have been observed in a large number of laboratory experiments on systems ranging from solid state lasers, to SQUIDs, and such behavior has been hypothesized to account for some of the more striking information processing properties of biological neurons. In many cases, background noise can precipitate this behavior, thereby playing a significant role in the optimization of the response of these systems to small external perturbations.





A series of meetings on topics such as Stochastic Resonance, Experimental Chaos, and Neural Coding, have attempted to bring together researchers working in cutting-edge research in the field of applied nonlinear dynamics across various disciplines in science with emphasis in theory and methods. However, there has not been, to date, a meeting that brings together researchers who are actually attempting to apply and exploit this knowledge to fabricate devices that can operate more efficiently (e.g. without complicated circuits to, essentially, block the effects of the nonlinearity) and with lesser costs, while affording the promise of much better performance. Given the current explosion of ideas in areas as diverse as molecular motors, nonlinear filtering theory, noise-enhanced propagation, stochastic resonance and (perhaps most importantly) networked systems, the time is rather appropriate, particularly in this dawn of the era of nanotechnology, to have a meeting of researchers who are actually attempting to integrate some of the fundamental principles and methods of nonlinear dynamics into real devices.



The meeting is a continuation to the 2010 ICAND held in Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada, 2007 ICAND, meeting held in Poipu Beach, Koloa (Kauai), Hawaii, USA, and the 2005 DANOLD (Device Applications of Nonlinear Dynamics) meeting, held in Catania, Italy. These meeting brought together researchers from physics, engineering, and biology who were involved in the analysis and development of applications that incorporate and, indeed, exploit the nonlinear behavior of certain dynamical systems. ICAND's focus is on the implementation of theoretical ideas into actual devices and systems. However, realizing that theoretical ideas and discoveries march to the beat of their own drum, the meeting will also feature some novel theoretical ideas that have not yet made it to the drawing board, but show great promise for future development of cutting-edge technologies.