ESBiomech Newsletter Autumn 2020

Dear Subscriber,

We are pleased to present the Autumn 2020 news updates from the European Society of Biomechanics. In this newsletter, we summarized the main activities of the ESB in the last three months although, like many things, still heavily influenced by Covid-19. As usual, all members are welcome to actively contribute information to this newsletter and to the ESB website in general. Let me know of anything of general interest, scientific articles, advertisements, upcoming meetings or particular items of discussion.

Michele Conti, Chair of the Publication Committee

From the President

We’re half way through December. Typically a time to make plans for the Christmas break and to reflect upon the year that has passed. Even so this year. Most of us would have planned to see family and friends during the Christmas break, but such visits will have to be cancelled, or will be very limited at best. Due to the corona pandemic things are different than other years, very different, and even that is an understatement. If you would have told me one year ago that I would be living under curfew in Belgium, I would have declared you crazy; yet, it is being a reality for two months now. Many social activities have been put on hold already for much longer. And also our scientific life has been impacted: labs closing down, working from home, teaching to a screen instead of an auditorium filled with students. I’m not telling anything new when I say that 2020 has been a tough year in many aspects.

But we’ll get through this, also as a Society!

One thing you can look forward to in 2021 is an exciting ESB meeting! The Milan team with captain Francesco Migliavacca is working hard to ensure that ESB2021 will be THE place to present your latest biomechanics work! Hopefully, ESB2021 can be held as planned in the university buildings in Milan. The organizers are keeping a close watch on how the corona/covid-19 situation is developing and will modify the structure of the conference if needed. It might mean that instead of an onsite meeting, ESB2021 will be online only, or maybe a hybrid solution. Plans are already being developed and a final decision will be made early 2021. Bottomline: there will be a meeting and it will be a good one! Hence, submit your latest work before the deadline of January 31!

And did I tell you that you can look forward to social events at ESB2021? If there is one thing we have come to realize this year it is the importance of social interaction. On site, there will be many opportunities to meet colleagues and have a good time. But in case the event will be online we will make sure to include moments and activities where you can interact with your colleagues.

One other thing to look forward to and enjoy is … science and scientific research! As researchers we have the privilege to be doing that on a daily basis. It’s the fuel that keeps us going. Indeed, in a survey by Nature in 2019 ‘intellectual challenge’ was the most important aspect by far that PhD students enjoy about doing a PhD. Often time it’s a long journey, but each day we can take the first step. Every day we can dream about developing this novel biomechanics tool or discovering this amazing mechanobiological pathway, and dream of new horizons; or to put it in the words of Star Trek’s captain Picard “to boldly go where no one has gone before” 😉. While science forms the very heart of our Society I want to emphasize that scientific research is done by humans, you. Be sure that through awards, scientific dissemination, and many other existing and novel actions ESB will continue supporting you!

I wish you a merry Christmas and all the best for 2021! Take good care of yourself. And of each other, especially in these days.

Harry van Lenthe, ESB President

Meeting News

Next ESB Congresses

26th Congress of the ESB (ESBiomech2021) in Milan

A message from the local Organizing committee of Milan 2021:

Dear Colleagues, We are pleased to announce the 26th Congress of the European Society of Biomechanics (ESB 2021) to be organized in Milano, Italy, on July 11-14, 2021. www.esbiomech2021.org.

The congress will take place at the Politecnico di Milano – its main campus is located in downtown Milano and close to the heart of the city, easily reachable through the Milan public transportation system. Milano is the most active and modern city in Italy, with a clear vocation to the European culture. It offers a wide variety of enjoyable cultural and artistic landmarks. Given the uncertain public health conditions due to the current pandemic, if an in-person congress is not possible, an online format is foreseen for the conference. Information on the final format of the congress will be given in due time. The pre-courses and welcome reception will take place in the main Campus on Sunday.

Politecnico di Milano is one of the most outstanding technical universities in Europe, ranked 1st in Italy. Established in 1863, it is the largest school of Architecture, Design and Engineering in Italy, with two main campuses located in Milan, the heart of fashion and design industries and the venue of Expo 2015, and five more campuses around the Lombardy region. In particular, Politecnico di Milano boast a large group of researchers active in the biomedical engineering fields and in Biomechanics in particular, which makes Politecnico one of the leading universities in Italy in the biomechanical fields.

We are very grateful to Profs. Federica Caselli (Università Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy), David Steinman (University of Toronto, Canada) and Nico Verdonschot (Medical University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands), who agreed to deliver Keynote Lectures. Perspective and Keynotes selected from the 2020 submissions are posted on the congress website.

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION Abstract for podium presentations (both in-person and online) and posters can be submitted online through the congress website by January 31^st 2021. Further information and templates are available at Abstract submission page.

ESB21 Local Organizers

Future Congresses

ESBiomech2022 In 2022 the 27th Congress of ESB will be held in Porto, Portugal. The congress will take place at the Alfandega Porto Congress Center, situated in the heart of Porto’s historic city centre, from 26-29 June 2022. The congress chairs are Joăo Manuel R.S. Tavares (University of Porto), Paulo R. Fernandes (University of Lisbon) and Renato Natal Jorge (University of Porto). The ESB 2022 will present an exciting scientific programme incorporating all the traditional ESB sessions but also bringing new activities. The main theme of the ESB 2022 will be Biomechanics: Innovation, technology and societal impact. There will be many networking activities planned for students and delegates. We are looking forward to welcome you to ESB 2022 in Porto!
ESBiomech2023 In 2023 the 28th Congress of ESB will be held in Maastricht, the Netherlands. The congress will take place at the MECC Convention Center, situated just outside the city center, from 9-12 July 2023. ESBiomech2023 will be jointly organized by three renowned universities in close proximity to each other: Eindhoven University of Technology, KU Leuven, and the University of Liege.
ESBiomech2024 In 2024 the 29^th Congress of the ESB will be held in Edinburgh, UK. More details will be provided in future communications.

Endorsed meetings by the ESB

13th International Conference BIOMDLORE 2021 21-23 October, 2021 ilnius/Trakai (exact venue and place TBA), Lithuania (https://www.biomdlore.lt) ESB members will receive a 20% reduction on registration fees.
Biomechanics 2020, post-poned to 8-10 September 2021, Warsaw, Poland (https://biomechanics2020.wum.edu.pl/en) ESB members will receive a 20% reduction on registration fees.
5^th Virtual Physiological Human Summer School post-poned to 7-11 June 2021 Barcelona, Spain (https://eventum.upf.edu/46693/programme/5th-barcelona-vph-summer-school.html) ESB members will pay the same reduced registration fees as VPHi members (150 euros instead of 250 euros for the whole week).

Other meetings

BioMedEng21 6-7 September 2021 Sheffield, UK(https://biomedeng20.com/)

2021 Summer Biomechanics, Bioengineering, and Biotransport Conference (SB3C 2021)14-18 June 2021 Vail, Colorado, USA (www.sb3c.org)

Enrico Dall’Ara, Chair of the Meetings and External Affairs Committee

Dieter Pahr, Chair of the Meetings WebPortal Committee

ESB Awards at the 2021 ESB conference

Whilst the deadline for the Huiskes Medal has now closed and nominations are being scruitinised by an Award Panel, the deadline for the 2021 Best Doctoral Thesis Award and the 2021 Student Award is the 31st January 2021, to coincide with the closing date for abstract submission for the yearly ESB Congress.

We are thus very much looking forward to receiving your applications here – please do refer to the respective details on the website though (Best Doctoral Thesis Award, Student Award) to ensure compliance with the relevant award regulations for an application to be considered.

Markus Heller, Vice President of the ESB and Chair of the Awards Committee

ESB Education and Student Committee

ESB webinar series. On 27 October 2020, we hosted the fifth ESB webinar. The topic was an introduction to ITK-SNAP, an open-source software for Medical Image Segmentation. The webinar, attended by more than 50 participants, showcased some of the core capabilities of ITK-SNAP:

Visualization of 3D medical image data
Labeling of anatomical structures in 3D images both manually and semi-automatically
Loading, editing, and saving segmentation files
Rotating and landmarking 3D images
Using the ITK-SNAP distributed segmentation service

The recordings of all webinars can be seen by subscribing to the ESB You Tube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/ESBiomech

Mark in your calendar!
Upcoming webinar: Making the most of your microscopy images with high-content image analysis in CellProfiler
Tuesday 26 January 2021 16-17 CEST

Microscopy images are coming to be recognized as the rich and quantitative data source that they have been since the advent of the digital image; many excellent image analysis tools now exist to help researchers find objects of interest in their data and extract measurements of images and/or objects. This webinar will discuss one such tool, CellProfiler (https://cellprofiler.org/), which places an emphasis on making reproducible workflows to capture large measurement suites from many images. It will also discuss the value of the large measurement sets that it can create, both for exploring desired phenotypes with supervised clustering in tools like CellProfiler Analyst and for the range of unsupervised dataset exploration techniques we call morphological profiling.

Social Networks

Don’t forget to check our social networks where we post the latest news and job offers:

Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/ESBiomech/)
Facebook students (https://www.facebook.com/groups/ESBiomech.Students/)
LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4257919)
Twitter (https://twitter.com/ESBiomech)

Aurélie Carlier, Chair of ESB Education and Student Committee

Treasurer’s Report

By the time of this newsletter, more than 50% of our members are in good standing. Thank you to all who have paid and are contributing to a financially healthy society. Such a financial health is chiefly important for the continuous support of the ESB activities, which include among others, several major awards that promote excellence and collaborative research within our community.

For those who have pending payments, please consider this message as a gentle reminder to log onto the esbiomech.org webpage to pay your dues.

PayPal is the preferred method of payment as this is quick and easy (Payment via PayPal updates your membership status instantaneously). Alternatively, it is possible to pay by bank transfer (please do not forget to include your surname and payment ID to ensure your payment is not lost). Importantly, only members in good standing qualify for a reduction in the registration fee for the ESB2021 conference in Milano. Other benefits for members in good standing include the participation to the ESB Awards and journal subscriptions /publication fees at a reduced cost. Remember that given the perturbations of the ESB services caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, all paying members (Active, Students and Corporate), in good standing in 2020, will have their 2021 membership automatically covered.

Should you need a receipt of payment, you can download this document directly from your own individual member page. After logging onto esbiomech.org and navigating to your member page, you will find a list of all your payments and individual links to produce printable receipts. If you require a specific address on the invoice for reimbursement (i.e. your business address), just update your personal details to include the correct address as your primary contact. You may also include an alternative address with your profile and choose at any time to which address your correspondence will be sent.

Jérôme Noailly, ESB Treasurer

ESB National Chapters & External Affairs News

edited by Mark Thompson, Chair of the Membership Committee Enrico Dall’Ara, Chair of the Meetings and External Affairs Committee

ESB National Chapters

Italian ESB Chapter no news from the ESB Italian Chapter.

Spanish ESB Chapter no news from the ESB Spanish Chapter.

Austrian ESB Chapter

On November 30, 2020, a full day scientific meeting of the Austrian Chapter of ESB took place. The virtual meeting was co-organized by Technische Universität Wien (TU Wien), Paracelsus Medical University, Medical University of Innsbruck, Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences, and Medical University of Vienna. It was also supported by ViCEM – Vienna Center for Engineering in Medicine. The organizers were pleased to welcome 73 registered participants, among them also participants from France, Germany, Greece, Israel, and Italy. After a brief welcome address by Christian Hellmich, current President of the Austrian Chapter of ESB, the scientific program was opened by a Keynote Lecture of Stéphane Avril on “Biomechanics and mechanobiology of aneurysm progression: the journey towards better healthcare”. Stéphane Avril, Professor at École Mines Saint-Etienne, France is spending the academic year 2020/21 as Guest professor at TU Wien. The scientific program was comprising sessions on “Recent developments in biomechanics”, “Molecules, cells, and fibrils”, “Bone simulations and clinical applications”, and “Bone experiments”. The 17 short presentations were mostly given by PhD students. After each presentation, there was time for a discussion, which was intensively used, even under the restrictions arising from the virtual meeting format. These question-and-answer sessions tackled topics like advanced, AI-supported fracture risk assessment in aneurysms, CFD simulations for artificial heart devices, mechanical analogues for COVID spreading mechanisms, the cell biology underlying miniature structures in invertebrates, experimental/theoretical/computational nanomechanics of fibrils and macromolecules, and numerous recent advances in the rich field of bone biomechanics, a topic the Austrian chapter is particularly known for. The next meeting is scheduled for spring 2021 at PMU in Salzburg. The organizers are optimistic that the meeting can be held as a physical or at least hybrid meeting.

Christian Hellmich and Martina Pöll, on behalf of the Austrian Chapter of the ESB.

Affiliated Societies

Virtual Physiological Human institute (VPHi)

C4BIO: a Community Challenge towards Consensus on Characterization of Biological Tissue is the challenge recently launched by the VPH Institute, the Avicenna Alliance and FIBEr. The aim of the challenge is to achieve community consensus regarding the testing protocols for material characterization of biological tissue and disseminate this consensus to the relevant standards bodies (i.a. ISO & ASME). The physical properties of interest can be thermal, mechanical or electrophysiological. In the first stage, this challenge will focus on mechanical tissue properties collected through in vitro experiments. In vitro mechanical characterization of biological material entails many aspects, including tissue collection, preservation, preparation, experimental set-up, protocol development, execution and post processing. A wide variety of testing methods exist which are often specific to the tissue, the material parameters of interest and the clinical situation of interest. Standardization in this broad field is non-trivial. The challenge will therefore be organized in different test campaigns, each time focusing on a single aspect. We invite all research groups with experience in material characterization of biological tissues to join this initiative. Full details on https://c4bio.eu

Mapping the use of computer models & simulations in clinics

Over the last decade, we have seen incredible advances in the research leading to the realisation of the vision of the VPHi. At the last VPH conference, we have also witnessed an increase in the use of computer models & simulations to improve effectively clinical care. Successful experiences have been reported in scientific publications and presentations, but the spread of computer models & simulations is not always reflected timely and accurately in the literature. Hence, we would like to take a snapshot of the current status of in silico medicine and get insights on applications, level of acceptance and current barrier. The results of this survey will be openly shared with all the community. Please get involved by sharing the survey with your clinical colleagues!

Survey link: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/9ZTBW87

Digital Twin: The Journey Towards Better Healthcare What is a Digital Twin? How can it be used to make our life better? This short video produced by the VPHi explains in very simple terms how through the use of computer simulations we can create digital versions of ourselves (Digital Twins) to improve the understanding, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of a disease.

More details on https://youtu.be/3-uBFx-LhWI

edited by VPHi Institute

Société de Biomécanique

The Société de Biomécanique (SB) has recently published their newsletter with some updates: The board of directors of the SB would like to congratulate the entire organizing team of the Metz congress. The challenge posed by such pandemic conditions was brilliantly met; this virtual congress was a great success. In a few figures, the congress gathered 180 participants and saw 125 accepted abstracts presented. Congratulations also to the invited speakers, the speakers and all those present for making this virtual congress a great success. Finally, congratulations to the winners of the Société de Biomécanique 2020 awards: Raphael Dumas for the Christian Oddou Award Madge Martin and Maxime Berg, for the thesis prize Aline Bel-Brunon, for the Young Researcher Award Kévin Aubert, for the best poster award The Ordinary General Meeting of the SB was held during our congress and three new members have been elected: Aurélie Benoit, Assistant Professor l’université de Paris Yoann Blache, Assistant Professor à l’université Lyon 1 Hélène Follet, Researcher at INSERM U403 à Lyon Congratulations also to Emilie de Brosses, Nasser Rezzoug and Alexandre Terrier who were reappointed to the Board of Directors. Many thank to the three members of the Board of Directors who have left us: Stéphane Baudry, Matthieu Ollivier and Sébastien Laporte. Finally, the office of the Board of Directors, sees the arrival of Bruno Watier as the new vice-president. Congratulations for this commitment to our community! Conference of the Société de Biomécanique 2021. In 2021, our annual congress will be held in Saint Etienne from October 25 to 27. Reserve the date in your agenda now to make this new congress a success! Finally, we are pleased to announce the ECSS Congress to be held in Paris in 2023. The Société de Biomécanique is a partner of this event.

From the newsletters of the SB.

Portuguese Society of Biomechanics

The Portuguese Society of Biomechanics will hold its biannual congress, CNB2021, in the beautiful city of Porto, on dates 19-20 February 2021 (https://cnbio2021.wixsite.com/cnb2021). Unfortunately, due to the SARS-CoV-2 (Covid 19), the meeting will be held virtually. This not allowed to socialize, but even though it will be a great opportunity for the whole Portuguese biomechanics community to share research, create networks and make new friends. It is also a moment for non-Portuguese researchers to join us and present your latest research results. More than 170 abstracts have been submitted and several online sessions are being planned. Another important moment of the society is the Portuguese National day of Biomechanics, created last year with several activities around Biomechanics labs in Portugal. The activities took and will take place on every day 28th of January, birth date of Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (28-01-1608). It is an important moment to show what is being done concerning biomechanics all over the country, universities and research groups.

edited by Antonio Ramos, on behalf of the Portuguese Society of Biomechanics

Danish Society of Biomechanics

Annual meeting of the Danish Society of Biomechanics. On November 13, we held the annual meeting of the Danish Society of Biomechanics. The meeting was converted to an online conference due to corona-restrictions. We received 115 registrations for the meeting and a total of 25 submitted abstracts, of which 6 were chosen to compete in the student competition. We had two keynote speakers at the meeting, Hanna Isakson (Lund University) and Reed Ferber (University of Calgary), who gave amazingly interesting talks on respectively “Multiscale and multimodal assessment of bone damage” and “Advancing the Field of Biomechanics Through Wearable Sensors and Machine Learning”. The student competition was packed with exciting talks but was eventually won by Bo E. Seiferheld for his project on exoskeletons entitled “Biomechanical investigation of a passive upper extremity exoskeleton for manual material handling – a computational parameter study”. Very cool project! All-in-all the meeting was a great success with very interesting content and more participants than we are used to at the physical meetings.

edited by Henrik Koblauch, on behalf of the Danish Society of Biomechanics

Polish Society of Biomechanics

Since many years the Polish Society of Biomechanics (PSB) organizes a Bi-annual international conference BIOMECHANICS covering wide fields of topics: biofluids, ergonomics, human movement, musculoskeletal modeling, rehabilitation robotics, sport biomechanics, biomaterials, and many others. International Conference of the Polish Society of Biomechanics BIOMECHANICS 2020 was planned for the end of September 2020, but due to the global COVID-SARS-2 pandemia was moved to the next year, and will take place in Warsaw from 8th to 10th of September 2021. The web page of the conference is: biomechanics2020.wum.edu.pl/en. We hope that the epidemic situation will ameliorate till this time, but the hybrid form is also under consideration. In mid-October there was General Meeting of PSB, the first one in the Society’s history organized on-line due to pandemia. During that Meeting also the on-line elections of the new Board were organized, as the 4 years terms of office of the previous one expired.

edited by Małgorzata Syczewska, on behalf of the PSB

Hellenic Society of Biomechanics

The Hellenic Society of Biomechanics (HSB) recently appointed two of its founding members as its ambassadors.

Prof. A. Arampatzis, Head of the Department of Training and Movement Sciences and Spokesperson of the Berlin School of Movement Science at the Humboldt-University Berlin
Prof V. Baltzopoulos, Head of the Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences of the Liverpool John Moores University Both of them are highly resected colleagues with an international profile and are also about to be appointed honorable/life-long members of the society, at our upcoming conference in October 2021.
Prof V. Baltzopoulos and Prof. A. Arampatzis will assist the HSB’s board in raising awareness concerning its activities and disseminating the society’s output over the next years.

edited by Alexander Tsouknidas, on behalf of the Hellenic Society of Biomechanics