ESB Award Announcements
Huiskes Medal 2015
The Huiskes Medal for Biomechanics is the ESB’s highest scientific tribute, presented in honour of Prof. R. Huiskes, and awarded to senior researchers who have contributed significantly to biomechanics throughout their careers. After an intensive reviewing process, the ESB is delighted to announce that the 2015 Huiskes Medal will be presented to Prof. Roger Kamm, Cecil and Ida Green Distinguished Professor of Biological and Mechanical Engineering, M.I.T., Cambridge, MA.
Roger’s scientific contributions to the field are reflected in more than 250 refereed publications with an h-index of 71. His studies over the past thirty-five years have addressed biomechanical, and more recently mechanobiological, issues in the respiratory, ocular and cardiovascular systems. More recently, his attention has focused on new areas, including the molecular mechanisms of cellular force sensation, cell population dynamics, and the development of new microfluidic platforms for the study of cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions. Roger has been a leader in bridging mechanics together with biology and chemistry: by exploring the ways in which single molecules transmit force through macromolecular networks and the resulting change in molecular binding or enzymatic activity.
In addition to his research, Roger has served as an exemplary educator both in the classroom and in his laboratory. He has developed new courses for MIT students and co-authored textbooks on cytoskeletal mechanics and cellular mechanotransduction, helping to train a very large swath of future biomechanicians.
Roger’s contributions and impact in the biomechanics field are far-reaching. Recognition for Kamm’s contributions is reflected in a number of awards and honours, including his election as Fellow to the AIMBE, ASME, BMES, AAAS and the IFMBE. He is also the 2010 recipient of the ASME Lissner Medal for lifetime achievements and is a member of the Institute of Medicine.
Roger is clearly a worthy winner of the ESB Huiskes Medal, and we all look forward to his award keynote lecture at the ESB Congress in Prague.
Best Thesis Award 2015
The ESB is pleased to announce that Aurélie Carlier has been awarded the ESB Best Thesis Award 2015 for her thesis entitled “Multi-scale modelling of angiogenesis during bone regeneration”. Aurélie works at the Biomechanics Section, KU Leuven, under the supervision of Prof. Hans van Oosterwyck (KU Leuven) and Prof. L. Geris (University of Liège).
In her PhD project an existing bioregulatory model of fracture healing was extended with an intracellular module of Dll4-Notch signalling in
order to capture the ingrowth of new blood vessels through sprouting angiogenesis. Moreover, the influence of oxygen on the behaviour of skeletal cells was also implemented. The multi-scale computational model was corroborated with previously published experimental results and an extensive sensitivity analysis was performed on the newly introduced parameters. Finally, the multi-scale model was applied to three cases of impaired bone healing, i.e. the occurrence of non-unions in critical size defects, bone graft healing in a compromised host environment and impaired healing of bone fractures in NF-1 patients. In conclusion, this PhD thesis demonstrates the potential of an integrative in vivo – in silico approach to advance the current understanding of bone regeneration as well as design effective treatments for complex orthopaedic conditions. The outcomes of her work include some 7 peer reviewed journal manuscripts and a number of awards, including the European Society of Biomechanics (ESB) Student Award 2012. All reviewers agreed that she has managed to present a lovely piece of work, which was well worthy of winning the 2015 Best Thesis Award.
Aurélie will present her work in an award keynote lecture at the upcoming ESB Congress in Prague.
Student Award 2015
The 2015 Student Awards Committee is pleased to announce that the 4 finalists to compete for the 2015 ESB Student Award will be:
Falk Mersmann: “Validation of a shape-based volume prediction method in thigh muscles”
Janna Tenenbaum-Katan: “Respiratory flows during early childhood: in-silico and in-vitro biomimetic models of inhalation therapy in the developing airways”
Marios Georgiadis: “First study on ultrastructure arrangement of human trabeculae using 3D scanning SAXS”
Stefano Ugolini: “Differential proliferative responses of human primary cardiac fibroblasts to cyclic strain in a microdevice”
The final award winner will be decided based on each candidate’s presentation at the ESB Congress in Prague, graded according to a secret ballot held by all the meeting delegates attending the award lectures.
Travel Awards
ESB Travel Awards will be awarded to the most worthy applicants, as selected by the ESB Award Committee. The purpose of the Travel Awards is to financially help young researchers to participate at the ESB Congress. The Award consists of a certificate and an amount of 400 €, which is expected to be used for travel, accommodation and living expenses during the ESB meeting. Any ESB member who is undertaking Master or PhD studies, or who has not more than 5 years PostDoc experience, and who has an accepted paper at the ESB Congress is eligible to apply. The applicant must be the first author of the abstract.
For consideration, the candidate must submit an application by email to the Chairman of the Award Committee, briefly outlining and justifying why they are requesting a travel grant, including a copy of the officially accepted paper to the next ESB Congress and the applicant’s curriculum vitae. The deadline for receipt of these nominations for the 2015 ESB Congress in Prague is May 10th, 2015. All applications should be sent to the Awards Committee Chairman, Prof. W. R. Taylor in pdf format: award.chair@esbiomech.org
Reviewers
As you can all appreciate, the time and effort required for reviewing the extensive material submitted to these various awards is considerable. I would therefore like to personally thank all of the reviewers who have been involved in this year’s awards for making my task easy. There was very little convincing or chasing involved, and yet there has been fair and objective discussion in order to ensure the correct decisions. I am very grateful to you all.
I look forward to seeing you all in Prague!
William R.Taylor, ETH Zurich, 2015
