ESBiomech24 Congress in Edinburgh

PhD in endometriosis biomechanics @Université Paris-Est Créteil Val de Marne

Location: Paris area
Laboratoire Modélisation et Simulation Multi Echelle (MSME, UMR 8208 CNRS)
Université Paris-Est Créteil Val de Marne (UPEC)
61, avenue du Général de Gaulle 94010 Créteil Cedex France

Starting date: Fall 2024

Context: Endometriosis is an inflammatory and chronic disease that affects near 1 in 10 women. It is characterized by the presence and the pathological proliferation of tissue similar to the endometrium (uterine mucosa) outside the uterus. This project partially funded by the patients’ association EndoFrance and the French Endometriosis Research Foundation (Fondation pour la recherche sur l’endométriose, EndoMeca project) targets endometriosis biomechanics. The overarching goal is to evaluate the influence of endometriosis on the distribution of forces in the abdomen, and the perception of these stresses within the pathological tissues. The role of mechanics in the development of endometriosis and patient symptoms is a subject that is mostly unexplored. However, it is evident today that endometriosis alters the mechanical properties of tissues and that these pathological developments have an impact on pelvic pain and the functioning of organs.

Objectives: The goal of the EndoMeca study is to uncover the role of mechanobiology on endometriosis physiopathology at the different scales, from cell mechanosensation to organ mechanics. The candidate will collect the first data on mechanobiology of endometriotic tissue, and subsequently provide the tools to quantify endometriosis-induced changes in local and macroscopic mechanics and biochemistry.

Within the scope of this project, three research axes will be explored over the next years. The first axis focuses on experimental work in histology and mechanics – investigating the links between the tissue mechanical behavior and the pathological micro-environment. Significant 2D and 3D data will be obtained from the analysis of biopsies through several imaging modalities. The second research axis involves image analysis including rendering, segmentation and meshing of 3D heterogeneous volumes to perform a quantitative analysis of the impact of endometriosis on various pelvic organs. The third part of the project is centered on theoretical and numerical modeling. The challenge will be to reproduce the changes in pelvic tissue geometry, microstructure and biomechanical properties through the definition of a relevant growth and remodeling law.

The candidate will be expected to conduct the research within one or several of these axes.

The candidate: The scope of this study is broad and we currently accept applications from various backgrounds: mechanical engineering, materials science / engineering, biomechanics, bioengineering, biology or image processing.

We will give priority to candidates with at least 2 of the following skills:

  • 2D/3D segmentation
  • Finite element analysis
  • Histology
  • Light/ Fluorescence Microscopy
  • Mechanics of materials
  • Programming knowledge (C, Matlab, Python…)
  • The interest in living tissue and clinical applications will be appreciated but is not necessary.

Deadline: March 29th, 2024. After that date, please contact Dr Martin as other opportunities may be available then.

How to apply: Please send your CV and cover letter to Madge MARTIN (madge.martin@cnrs.fr), Matthieu CARUEL (matthieu.caruel@u-pec.fr) and Vittorio SANSALONE (vittorio.sansalone@u-pec.fr).

4 positions at the Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (IMBE) in Leeds, UK

The Institiute of Medical and Biological Engineering (IMBE) in Leeds, UK, is currently recruiting for 4 positions:

  1. researcher (research fellow requiring a PhD or research assistant requiring a Master) in computational damage biomechanics: https://jobs.leeds.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx?ref=EPSME1154 (for the research assistant role, check your UK working eligibility by contacting InternationalHR@leeds.ac.uk)
  2. post-doctoral research (research fellow requiring a PhD) in knee and hip biomechanical evaluation: https://jobs.leeds.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx?ref=EPSME1155
  3. PhD student in spine biomechanics: https://phd.leeds.ac.uk/project/1826-integrating-morphology-and-mechanics-developing-a-statistical-shape-and-appearance-model-ssam-for-spinal-health-assessment-intervention-planning
  4. PhD student in bone healing: https://phd.leeds.ac.uk/project/1820-computational-biomechanical-modelling-of-external-fixation-of-fractures-to-predict-bone-healing

All details of application processes are available on the respective links, deadlines within the next month.

The multi-disciplinary IMBE is embedded within the School of Mechanical Engineering and the Faculty of Biological Sciences at the University of Leeds. It is a dynamic world-renowned medical engineering research centre which specialises in research and translation of musculoskeletal and cardiovascular medical technologies that promote ’50 active years after 50’.

As a researcher or PhD student within IMBE, there will be opportunities to contribute to wider activities related to medical technologies including public and patient engagement, group training and social events. Groups of researchers working on aligned projects or using similar methods meet regularly to share ideas and best practice, and we encourage collegiate working. We will support your long-term career ambitions through bespoke training and encourage external secondments, laboratory visits or participation at international conferences.

10 PhD positions in the Europe Horizon Marie Skłodowska-Curie Project REBONE

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:

  1. Position 1: Methods for optimization of bone-substitute architectures (Politecnico di Milano, Italy);
  2. Position 2: Micro- and macro-mechanical characterization of materials and devices and in-silico Models (Politecnico di Milano, Italy);
  3. Position 3: 3D printing technologies for Glass-Ceramic and Glass-Ceramic-based composite BTE scaffolds (Politecnico di Torino, Italy);
  4. Position 4: Tissue-scaffold biological interaction (Università del Piemonte Orientale, Italy)
  5. Position 5: Design of bone inspired scaffolds and biomechanical characterization of the bone-scaffold construct (Université de Liege, Belgium)
  6. Position 6: Industrial process for glass-ceramic device manufacturing through VPP (Lithoz GmbH, Austria)
  7. Position 7: Characterization of fracture relevant bone sites for information on the structural/compositional requirements of the implant (Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, Austria)
  8. Position 8: Models for Tissue growth and fundamental relationships with micro-architecture of scaffolds (University of Salzburg, Austria)
  9. Position 9: Biomimetic in vitro culture models for evaluation of novel bone substitute implants (University of Belgrade, RS)
  10. 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:

2 PhD positions on atherosclerotic arterial wall biomechanics @Erasmus MC & TU Delft

The Cardiovascular Biomechanics Group at Erasmus Medical Center / TU Delft has two PhD positions available currently, both on atherosclerotic arterial wall biomechanics, one experimental and the other one computational.

Further info can be reached at https://aliakyildiz.net/vacancies/.

Application for the openings:

Position 1.) https://www.werkenbijerasmusmc.nl/en/vacancy/95506/phd-position-field-computational-vascular-biomechanics-48.24.23.tt

Position 2.) https://www.werkenbijerasmusmc.nl/en/vacancy/95504/phd-position-translational-and-experimental-biomechanics-atherosclerosis-48.23.23.tt

2 PhD positions in cancer mechanobiology @University of Galway

Applications are invited from suitably qualified candidates for multiple full-time, fully-funded positions that will investigate the mechanobiology of tumour growth and therapy resistance. These positions are funded by a European Research Council Starting Grant and will be under the supervision of Dr Eoin McEvoy, Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering. The researcher will join Dr McEvoy’s group, which brings together expertise in biophysical modelling, active cell biomechanics, and in-vitro tumour models. The group’s overall focus is to develop advanced computational and experimental models that provide a mechanistic understanding of cell and tissue remodelling in cancer and disease, motivating novel mechano-therapeutics and treatment strategies. For further information, see www.mechanomodel.ie.

Project Description: Personalised medicine presents an exciting frontier in healthcare that tailors disease mitigation and intervention to an individual patient. This project will develop integrated experimental and computational models for the prediction of cancer patient outcomes, leveraging the biophysical forces that underpin cell behaviour. PhD research topics will bridge subcellular remodelling, single cell mechanobiology, and macroscale tumour evolution to provide a new and fundamental understanding of tumour growth and therapy resistance in breast cancer. As part of the PhD programme (project dependent), you will receive training in computational and experimental cell mechanics, patient-derived tumour organoid generation, microfluidic cell culture, advanced microscopy, agent-based modelling, and/or advanced finite element analysis.

Application Deadline: Applications will be reviewed periodically until January 31st, 2024.

More information:

PhD position – FE modeling of breast compression during mamography @Lund University

We have an open PhD position at Lund University, Sweden, with focus on developing FE based simulation models for breast compression during mamography with implications for breast cancer diagnostics. Please see the link below for more information!

https://lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/jobID:662804/type:job/where:4/apply:1

PhD position in computational cardiovascular mechanics @University of Glasgow

I am looking for motivated students to join my research group and work towards their PhD in the area of computational cardiovascular biomechanics. Interested candidates are encouraged to email ankush.aggarwal@glasgow.ac.uk to discuss further. More details of the PhD position are provided below.

Project Summary: Almost 30% of all deaths globally are related to cardiovascular diseases. The overall aim of computational cardiovascular biomechanics is to help improve the diagnosis of these diseases (faster, earlier, more precise), provide better surgical outcomes, and design devices that last longer. To achieve that aim, we study the biomechanical properties of tissues and cells comprising the cardiovascular system using a combination of in-vivo imaging, ex-vivo and in-vitro testing, and in-silico modeling. Several project topics are available, which can be categorized into model development (at organ and cellular scales) and method development (based on imaging and using data science approaches). A few examples of specific projects are:

1) Predicting aneurysm development from ultrasound images using growth and remodeling simulations
2) Modeling of endothelial cells based on in-vitro experiments
3) Uncertainty quantification of biomechanical properties based on combined ex-vivo and in-vivo dataset
4) Gaussian process modeling for cardiovascular tissue mechanics
5) Development of a digital twin of the thoracic aorta

During this project, the student will have opportunities to:

  • Develop skills necessary to work at the interface of engineering and biomedical science
  • Publish papers in high-quality journals
  • Present research results at international conferences
  • Learn about nonlinear finite element analysis, nonlinear mechanics, multiscale modeling, image-based analysis, data science, and other numerical techniques
  • Learn about experimental and clinical validation
  • Collaborate with our international academic and industrial partners
  • Interact within the Glasgow Centre for Computational Engineering with other researchers (GCEC) and across departments with biomedical scientists and clinicians

Eligibility: Candidates must have an undergraduate degree in a relevant field, such as Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Mathematics and Computing Science, with a minimum 2.1 or equivalent final grade. A background in mechanics and knowledge of numerical methods (such as finite element analysis) would be necessary. Programming skills will be required for computational modeling.

Application: The deadline for applications is 31 January 2024, and the application process consists of two parts:
1) On-line academic application: Go to https://www.gla.ac.uk/postgraduate/research/infrastructureenvironment/ and click on the ‘Apply now’ tab. Applicants should attach relevant documents such as CV, transcripts, references and a research proposal.
2) School of Engineering EPSRC/School Scholarship Application via online portal: https://www.gla.ac.uk/ScholarshipApp/]gla.ac.uk/ScholarshipApp/ To complete the scholarship application, students will need a supporting statement from the proposed supervisor. Any queries about application procedure can be directed to eng-jws@glasgow.ac.uk

Further information: If you are interested or want more information, please contact me at my email (ankush.aggarwal@glasgow.ac.uk) before starting the formal application. Please visit Computational Biomechanics Research Group page or my staff page for more information on our research.

PhD Studentship in Data-driven image mechanics (D2IM): a deep learning approach to predict displacement and strain fields in biological tissues from X-ray tomography @University of Greenwich

The recent advent of deep learning (DL) has enabled data-driven models, paving the way for the full exploitation of rich image datasets from which physics can be learnt. Here at the University of Greenwich we recently developed a novel data-driven image mechanics (D2IM) approach that learns from digital volume correlation (DVC) displacement fields of bone, predicting displacement and strain fields for undeformed X-ray computed tomography (XCT) images [1]. This was the first study using experimental full-field measurements on bone structures from DVC to inform DL-based model such as D2IM, which represents a major contribution in the prediction of displacement and strain fields only based on the greyscale content of undeformed XCT images. The proposed PhD project will expand on this work to further develop D2IM capability by incorporating a range of biological structures (hard and soft tissues) and loading scenarios for accurate prediction of physical fields.

The project will benefit from a unique InCiTe 3D X-ray microscope from our partner KA Imaging (https://www.kaimaging.com/industry-and-research-solutions/incite-micro-ct/) capable of sub-micron resolution and fast phase-contrast (first and only technology of this type in Europe), including in situ mechanics and dedicated software solutions available at the Centre for Advanced Materials and Manufacturing (CAMM) as well as the Centre for Advanced Simulation and Modelling (CASM).

The PhD candidate will be involved in the following work:

  1. Development of XCT protocols on the InCiTe 3D X-ray microscope including phase retrieval for in situ mechanics and DVC of hard and soft tissues.
  2. Development of novel DL strategies to enhance D2IM capability for a comprehensive prediction of displacement and strain fields in biological tissues, only based on the greyscale content of undeformed XCT images.
  3. Data analysis and dissemination. Data obtained from this project will be disseminated in high-impact journal papers and international conferences.

[1] Soar and Tozzi, 2023. Data-driven image mechanics (D2IM): a deep learning approach to predict displacement and strain fields from undeformed X-ray tomography images – Evaluation of bone mechanics. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.21.558878v1

More information: https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DDK308/phd-studentship-in-data-driven-image-mechanics-d2im-a-deep-learning-approach-to-predict-displacement-and-strain-fields-in-biological-tissues-from-x-ray-tomography

PhD position in Computer mechanobiology of mandibular reconstruction @Charité -Universitätsmedizin Berlin

A PhD position is available within the Computational Mechanobiology Group at the Julius Wolff Institute (Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin), led by Prof. Sara Checa. This position is funded through a research grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG) to investigate the biomechanics of mandibular reconstruction with fibular free flap.

The successful candidate will have a strong background in one or more of the following areas: mechanics, computational biology and/or computational mechanics. Strong programming and computer modelling skills are required. The position is available for two years with an option to renew provided that adequate progress is made.

The work will be conducted in an interdisciplinary research environment composed of engineers, biologists and clinicians. As a PhD student, you will be associated to the Berlin-Brandenburg School of Regenerative Therapies (www.bsrt.de) and benefit from the interaction with international scientists.

The position will remain open until the position is filled. Applications should be sent to: Prof. Sara Checa (sara.checa@charite.de)

University Assistant (Prae-Doc) in Computational Biomechanics @ TU Wien, Vienna, Austria

The Research Unit Computational Biomechanics, ILSB, TU Wien is currently looking for a university assistant (prae-doc) for 30 hours/week (for expected four years). The expected start is November 2023.

More information can be found by following this link:

https://jobs.tuwien.ac.at/Job/215947?culture=en

Application deadline: 21.9.2023


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