The present volume is a continuation ofthe EL.B.A. Forum Series which was initiated in the spring of 1992 in Marciana Marina (Italy), with the first volume entitled From Neural Networks and Biomolecu/ar Engineering to Bioelectronics published by Plenum Press in 1995. Bioelectronics-miginally introduced in April, 1987, at a symposium hosted by CIREF, a research consortium among leading high tech industries in Novara (Italy)---was later defined in two successive consensus reports at the first (Bruxelles, 1991) and second (Frankfurt, 1994) European Union Workshops on this widely interdisciplinary field, as "the use ofbiological materials and biological architectures for information processing and sens- ing systems and devices down to molecular Ievel." lt is worth noting that these workshops gave birth to the first European research program on "lnterfacing Biology with Electronics" during 1996-1999, following the !arge Programma Nazionale Ricerca on "Technologies for Bioelectronics" launched by the ltalian Ministry ofUniversities and Research in 1990.
In autumn, 1996, with the second volume, entitledMolecular Manufacturing, the em- phasis was placed on the ernerging parallel area of nanotechnology, independently initiated in Palo Alto, Zurich, Genova, Mainz, and Tokyo by various groups (i.e., IBM, Xerox, Polo Nazionale Bioelettronica, Max Planck Institutes), universities (i.e., Stanford, Genova, Rice, Tokyo), and organizations (i.e., Foresight, Erato, Fondazione EL.B.A., Frontiers Research, MITI) of different sizes, scopes, and latitudes.