REBONE is a four-year Doctoral Network, funded by the Europe Horizon Marie Skłodowska programme, aiming at innovatively training a new generation of researchers to develop a multidisciplinary optimization process aimed at providing technologies for personalized bone-substitute implants, based on bioactive ceramics to address the health and societal burdens of trauma and bone diseases.
The musculoskeletal system is extremely vulnerable to ageing and traumatic events, and common clinical conditions often impose a high burden on the clinical system. For patients requiring bone-substitute implants to treat critical-size bone defects, new solutions are needed to address important unmet needs: personalised solutions for better clinical outcomes; improvements in materials to ensure higher mechanical reliability without compromising bioactive and bioresorbable properties; optimised manufacturing technologies for materials and products of high reliability and quality.
In order to achieve these ambitious goals REBONE is about to open 10 fully funded PhD positions to construct a platform of computational tools that will enable clinical experts to produce customized bone graft substitutes for the treatment of critical-size bone defects. This innovation will ensure that an ideal treatment solution is found on a patient-specific basis in terms of:
- mechanical and mechano-biological performance,
- surgical implantability, and
- manufacturing process reliability.
Furthermore, REBONE will develop state-of-the-art in silico models based on advanced computational methods and advanced characterisation and validation techniques to obtain personalised implants with a surgical planning visualization system in mixed reality with the following characteristics:
- tailored and reliable mechanical and physical properties;
- best osteointegration capability;
- targeted mechanical, physical and mechano-biological functions with patient-specific constraints taking into account the load-bearing anatomical location. Four selected clinical cases will be used as demonstrators of the optimization design and manufacturing processes.
LIST OF AVAILABLE PhD POSITIONS
Complete list of the 10 Doctoral positions available within REBONE:
- Position 1: Methods for optimization of bone-substitute architectures (Politecnico di Milano, Italy);
- Position 2: Micro- and macro-mechanical characterization of materials and devices and in-silico Models (Politecnico di Milano, Italy);
- Position 3: 3D printing technologies for Glass-Ceramic and Glass-Ceramic-based composite BTE scaffolds (Politecnico di Torino, Italy);
- Position 4: Tissue-scaffold biological interaction (Università del Piemonte Orientale, Italy)
- Position 5: Design of bone inspired scaffolds and biomechanical characterization of the bone-scaffold construct (Université de Liege, Belgium)
- Position 6: Industrial process for glass-ceramic device manufacturing through VPP (Lithoz GmbH, Austria)
- Position 7: Characterization of fracture relevant bone sites for information on the structural/compositional requirements of the implant (Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, Austria)
- Position 8: Models for Tissue growth and fundamental relationships with micro-architecture of scaffolds (University of Salzburg, Austria)
- Position 9: Biomimetic in vitro culture models for evaluation of novel bone substitute implants (University of Belgrade, RS)
- Position 10: Mixed reality for planning of implant surgery for bone defects of irregular shapes (MEDAPP SPÓŁKA AKCYJNA, Poland)
For info and application procedure please visit the project website https://rebone.eu/ and here:
