25th Congress of the European Society of Biomechanics

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The 25th Congress of ESB will take place in Vienna, Austria from 7 – 10 July 2019.

ESB 2019 is jointly organized by Philipp THURNER (TU Wien), Dieter PAHR (TU Wien & KL Krems), and Christian HELLMICH (TU Wien). The congress itself will take place at the University of Vienna which is located in the centre of the city.

Prospective authors are encouraged to submit their latest research for capturing and discussing the science at the forefront of biomechanics in a mix of oral and poster presentations.

Abstracts have to be submitted online through the congress website by January 31, 2019. Further information is available here.

Further detailed information as well as information on sponsoring and exhibition can be found here.

We are looking forward to receiving your contributions and to welcoming you at ESB2019 in Vienna!

New post @Marco Viceconti’s group in Bologna: dissemination, communication, and community engagement on in silico medicine

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In the frame of the Strituvad project we are opening a new position for communication officer.  The position is initially for 12 months, but can be extended for additional two.

The aim of this research contract is the creation of a community of practice around the emerging applications of the so-called in silico medicine, with particular reference to in silico trials, where modelling and simulation technologies are used for the certification of new drugs or medical devices. Under the guidance of Prof Marco Viceconti one of the tope world-wide experts on in silico medicine, the researcher will create the content and manage web sites, social network accounts, e-newsletters, and online communities allowing all those interested in the topic who work in academia, industry, consulting or service firms or in regulatory agencies to exchange good practices on the use of modelling and simulation in medicine. The post is funded by the EU project STRITUVAD, which aims to develop in silico methods to reduce the cost of clinical trials for new therapies for tuberculosis in developing countries where this disease is endemic.

The ideal candidate should have:

  • A Master degree (Laurea Magistrale) or equivalent title in scientific disciplines or Communication Science
  • Excellent knowledge of English language (written and spoken)
  • Priority will be given to candidates with experience in Science Communication, dissemination of research results, networking and community building among scientists, production of press releases

If you are interested apply here: https://www.aricweb.unibo.it/BandiPubblicati/zz_Bandi_din.aspx?strid=961

or contact me by email for further information.

PhD Positions in Numerical study for Cardiovascular Stent @cimne

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Scope:

The objective of the position is to develop a PhD work on the subject “Numerical study for Cardiovascular stent: design and analysis”. The aim of the work will be to analyze the expansion of the stent and the contact with the artery to simulate thrombectomy technique. The developments will have to be carried out within the Kratos framework.

Functions to be developed:

Participate in the development of the thrombectomy technique. This includes software developments and reporting.
Develop a PhD thesis on subjects related to thrombectomy technique.
Publish on subjects related to Biomedical Engineering area.
Develop within the framework of the Kratos project.

Education and training (required):

Formation: Master in Engineering or Mathematics
Basic Knowledge of programming (Python, C++).
Required Languages: English
Knowledge of FEM and Optimization Techniques

More Details

http://www.cimne.com/vnews/10569/vac-2018-28-%E2%80%93-phd-position-in-the-biomedical-engineering-department

 

Posdoc Position in characterization and modeling of elastic protein @ Université de Lyon (France)

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Mechanical characterization and modeling of a synthetic elastic protein and its effects on the arterial function

A post-doctoral fellowship is available at the Center for Biomedical and Healthcare Engineering Mines Saint-Etienne – SAINBIOSE (INSERM-U1059) – Université de Lyon (France).

Scientific context: Elastin is the main elasticity provider for several soft tissues (such as dermis, arteries, pulmonary alveoli) in its fibrous form and a signaling molecule in cell/extracellular matrix interaction. Elastin-rich elastic fibers allow the large artery walls to transform the pulsatile blood flow ejected by the heart into a continuous blood flow in the peripheral arteries (Windkessel effect). Dysfunctions are highly correlated with diseases such as artery stenosis, aneurysm, hypertension or cardiac hypertrophy, which have strong repercussions on arterial biomechanics and can threaten the vessel integrity.
Setting aside surgery, there is currently no treatment for preventing, blocking or treating any loss of elasticity. It therefore appears, from a biomechanical point of view, that the introduction of an entity that provides elasticity within the arterial wall would be the most trivial action to stop arterial stiffening, but remains currently limited due to chemo-biological issues. The Arterylastic project, to which the thesis is linked, proposes to unlock this technological barrier using an original synthetic elastic protein (SEP) recently developed with a synthetic backbone devoted to skin engineering.

Academic context: As previously mentioned, the thesis takes place in a larger project named Arterylastic, funded by ANR, combining pluridisciplinary approaches of three laboratories in France: LBTI – the Laboratoire de Biologie Tissulaire et Ingénierie Thérapeutique (UMR5305 CNRS/UCBL1 Lyon), HP2 –Hypoxie Physiopathologie Cardiovasculaire et Respiratoire (INSERM U1042 – University Grenoble Alpes) and Sainbiose (within the Center for Biomedical and Healthcare Engineering CISSAINBIOSE/INSERM U1059 – Mines Saint-Etienne). The PhD student will work at CIS, which also conducts major international research projects in the field of soft tissue biomechanics, in particular aortic aneurysms. He will collaborate with other researchers involved in ERC projects (https://www.mines-stetienne.fr/en/author/avril/, https://www.emse.fr/~badel/).

Objectives: The objective is to restore (or at least improve) arterial function and mechanical properties under conditions of elastic fibers injury. The objective will be reached if the SEP is correctly integrated into elastic fibers and if the SEP restores arterial wall elasticity and/or physiological parameters in relevant animal models. In this thesis, we will evaluate the mechanical behavior of the cross-linked SEP and of arterial samples from treated mouse models and a numerical model will be developed from experimental data to better predict treatment parameters.
The main tasks will be:
1. Experimental tests will be carried out for characterizing the macroscopic mechanical properties of the SEP and of arteries treated with the SEP. The cross-linked SEP will be characterized using tensile tests with a customized device. Mechanical parameters of treated arteries will be assessed by measuring pressure-diameter curves from mouse arteries tested in a customized tension-inflation test.
2. A multiscale numerical model of the mechanical behavior of arteries will be elaborated, taking into account their microstructural composition and morphology (bilayer, specific contributions of elastin, collagen, smooth muscle cells, possible proteoglycans) and including the effects of possible grafting of the SEP to the arterial wall. The model will be tested for arteries with competent elastic fibers, for arteries with damaged elastin and induced-tissue remodelling, and for arteries treated with the SEP.
3. The experimental results obtained at task 1 will be used to evaluate and calibrate the prediction ability of the numerical model developed in task 2. Sensitivity analysis permitting to find the optimal treatment conditions with the SEP for different types of therapeutic targets will be addressed.

Candidate profile: Candidates with strong skills in mechanics (modeling and experimental) and biomechanics are expected. Motivation and interest in bioengineering applications is recommended.

How to apply: Send CV, cover letter and letters of recommendation to claire.morin@emse.fr and avril@emse.fr.

PhD Positions in Failure Criterion for Implanted Bone Screws @KLKREMS

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The Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences (KL) is part of an academic and research community located at the Campus Krems, and includes a network of comprising teaching hospitals in St. Pölten, Krems and Tulln. The university offers degree programs in Human Medicine, Psychotherapy, Counselling Sciences and Psychology and are tailored to the requirements of the Bologna model, opening the door to new, cutting-edge health professions. KL is committed to raising its profile in specific areas of biomedicine, biomedical engineering, and biopsychosocial sciences by entering into strategic academic and research partnerships with other institutions.

Starting at November 2018, the department of anatomy and biomechanics (division of biomechanics, Prof. Pahr, Dr. Reisinger) offers a research position, which is limited to the duration of three years:

Research Assistant m/f (Pre Doc, 30 h)

Your responsibilities:

  • Participation in the funded research project “A morphology based failure criterion for implanted bone screws”
  • In more detail: using of micro CT imaging, biomechanical testing, continuum mechanics, and 3d- printing
  • Programming of evaluation- and analysis scripts
  • Assistance in teaching in the fields of mathematics, physics, informatics and biomedical engineering
  • Engagement in other research projects

Your profile:

  • Degree in civil or mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering, technical physics, or similar fields
  • Basic knowledge in programming, biomechanics, imaging (CT), experimental material
  • characterization
  • Good English skills
  • The willingness to support teaching, experience is of advantage
  • Self-responsible and reliable working approach
  • Interest on scientific working and writing a dissertation
  • Friendly and team oriented personality

Your perspective:

  • You can expect a challenging job in an internationally recognized and highly motivated team
  • Achieve the academic degree of a PhD (Dr. techn.), issued from the TU Vienna.

The Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences is dedicated to achieving a balanced mix of male and female academic and non-academic staff. Consequently, applications from female candidates are particularly welcome.

The minimum gross salary for this position is € 2.112,40 (30 h).

Applications should include a motivation letter, curriculum vitae, and credentials and should be mailed by 17.10.2018 to Ms. Christina Schwaiger of the Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences, Dr.-Karl- Dorrek-Straße 30, 3500 Krems, Austria (bewerbung@kl.ac.at).

Webinar: THR Planning with Corin OPS and Simpleware Software

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Title: From Virtual Pre-Operative Planning to Surgical Reality – THR Planning with Corin OPS and Simpleware Software

Date: Wednesday, October 03, 2018

Time: 11:30 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Duration: 1 hour

Summary

This webinar will explore the Corin OPS™ Total Hip Replacement (THR) system through a patient’s journey. This involves performing pre-operative patient-specific analysis to improve surgical outcomes. We will demonstrate how medical imaging is used to create a personalized plan for the surgical procedure, including patient-specific 3D printed guides. In addition, tools are provided for post-operative assessment.

We will show how Synopsys’ Simpleware™ software has been used to streamline the OPS process, capitalizing on flexible scripting capabilities to enable the development of custom tools and a bespoke robust workflow, reducing the time per surgical case required and increasing consistency and traceability.

In this webinar you will:

  • Recognize the benefits of virtual pre-surgical planning
  • Understand Corin’s OPS™ system for transforming medical images into personalized surgical plans
  • See the value of integrating Simpleware software to automate pre-surgical planning workflows

See http://bit.ly/2OMr7Nc for more details

Applications Engineer – Simpleware Software, Exeter, UK

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Applications Engineer

18295BR

GREAT BRITAIN – Exeter

Job Description and Requirements

Overall purpose of job

Simpleware software is currently looking for a motivated applicant to join the technical support team. You should be passionate about working with image processing and 3D modelling software, and with providing technical knowledge and sales support. You will also be responsible for generating papers and promotional material which will require you to work very closely with customers and partners.

We offer a competitive salary for this position.

The closing date for this job posting is the 10th of September, 2018

Primarily, this will involve

  • Providing high quality and reliable technical support for our clients
  • Organising software demonstrations, workshops, and training
  • Visiting potential clients, and attending conferences and exhibitions
  • Generating proposals, papers, reports, press releases, software documentation, tutorials, etc.
  • Establishing new, and maintaining existing, long-term relationships with customers, partners and the media

Knowledge, experience, skills, and competencies

  • Qualified at least to first degree level in an Engineering related subject – preferably a first or 2:1
  • Experience using CAD, FEA (e.g. Abaqus, Ansys, Comsol, etc.) or CFD (e.g. Fluent, OpenFOAM, etc.) codes
  • Good knowledge of either image processing, biomechanical or materials modelling
  • Excellent presentation, communication and interpersonal skills
  • Strong personal organisation, with good project management skills and ability to work to deadlines
  • Strong project management ability, personal organisation and customer focus
  • Self-motivation and ability to work on own initiative whilst being a team player
  • Knowledge of scripting languages (e.g. Python) and web technologies (HTML, CSS, Java Script, PHP and MySQL) would be useful/an advantage

further details and apply online

PhD Project – Cardiff / Synopsys Inc Exeter, England, United Kingdom

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Job description

Synopsys NE Ltd (https://www.synopsys.com/simpleware.html) invites applications for an Early Stage Researcher position (Doctoral Candidate) as part of the Rapid Biomechanics and Simulation for Personalized Clinical Design (RAINBOW) MCSA European Training Network. RAINBOW is funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.

The post holder will be employed on a fixed term (36-month contract) and be principally based at the Synopsys-Simpleware offices in Exeter UK but will also be enrolled as a full time graduate student at Cardiff University (http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/) undertaking research towards a PhD degree award. The candidate will be expected to spend periods of time in Cardiff as well as with other partners in the consortium.

The post holder will develop numerical methods to simulate the deformations of soft-tissues in the context of computer-aided surgery. In particular, he/she will contribute to bridging the gap between advanced 3D imaging techniques and physics-based computer simulations in order to improve current capabilities in the area of computer-aided diagnostic and surgical planning. A thorough knowledge of software development is essential.

This is a full time (37.5 hours per week) position on a fixed term basis for a fixed-term of 36 months.

See https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/755835607/ for further details

PhD Project – Luxembourg / Synopsys Inc Exeter, England, United Kingdom

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Job description

Synopsys NE Ltd (https://www.synopsys.com/simpleware.html) invites applications for an Early Stage Researcher position (Doctoral Candidate) as part of the Rapid Biomechanics and Simulation for Personalized Clinical Design (RAINBOW) MCSA European Training Network. RAINBOW is funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.

The post holder will be employed on a fixed term (36-month contract) and be principally based at the Synopsys-Simpleware offices in Exeter UK but will also be enrolled as a full time graduate student at the University of Luxembourg (https://wwwen.uni.lu/) undertaking research towards a PhD degree award. The candidate will be expected to spend periods of time in Luxembourg as well as with other partners in the consortium.

The post holder will develop numerical methods to simulate the deformations of soft-tissues in the context of computer-aided surgery. In particular, he/she will contribute to bridging the gap between advanced 3D imaging techniques and physics-based computer simulations in order to improve current capabilities in the area of computer-aided diagnostic and surgical planning. A thorough knowledge of software development is essential.

This is a full time (37.5 hours per week) position on a fixed term basis for a fixed-term of 36 months.
See https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/755834914/ for further details.

PhD: mechanics of a synthetic elastic protein and effects on arterial function @ Lyon

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Doctoral thesis at the Center for Biomedical and Healthcare Engineering

Mines Saint-Etienne – SAINBIOSE (INSERM-U1059) – Université de Lyon (France)

 

Mechanical characterization and modeling of a synthetic elastic protein and its effects on the arterial function

 

Keywords: biomechanics, multiscale models, homogenization, elastin, mechanical characterization, tissue engineering.

 

Scientific context: Elastin is the main elasticity provider for several soft tissues (such as dermis, arteries, pulmonary alveoli) in its fibrous form and a signaling molecule in cell/extracellular matrix interaction. Elastin-rich elastic fibers allow the large artery walls to transform the pulsatile blood flow ejected by the heart into a continuous blood flow in the peripheral arteries (Windkessel effect). Dysfunctions are highly correlated with diseases such as artery stenosis, aneurysm, hypertension or cardiac hypertrophy, which have strong repercussions on arterial biomechanics and can threaten the vessel integrity.

Setting aside surgery, there is currently no treatment for preventing, blocking or treating any loss of elasticity. It therefore appears, from a biomechanical point of view, that the introduction of an entity that provides elasticity within the arterial wall would be the most trivial action to stop arterial stiffening, but remains currently limited due to chemo-biological issues. The Arterylastic project, to which the thesis is linked, proposes to unlock this technological barrier using an original synthetic elastic protein (SEP) recently developed with a synthetic backbone devoted to skin engineering.

 

Academic context: As previously mentioned, the thesis takes place in a larger project named Arterylastic, funded by ANR, combining pluridisciplinary approaches of three laboratories in France: LBTI – the Laboratoire de Biologie Tissulaire et Ingénierie Thérapeutique (UMR5305 CNRS/UCBL1 Lyon), HP2 –Hypoxie Physiopathologie Cardiovasculaire et Respiratoire (INSERM U1042 – University Grenoble Alpes) and Sainbiose (within the Center for Biomedical and Healthcare Engineering CISSAINBIOSE/INSERM U1059 – Mines Saint-Etienne). The PhD student will work at CIS, which also conducts major international research projects in the field of soft tissue biomechanics, in particular aortic aneurysms. He will collaborate with other researchers involved in ERC projects (https://www.mines-stetienne.fr/en/author/avril/, https://www.emse.fr/~badel/).

 

Objectives: The objective is to restore (or at least improve) arterial function and mechanical properties under conditions of elastic fibers injury. The objective will be reached if the SEP is correctly integrated into elastic fibers and if the SEP restores arterial wall elasticity and/or physiological parameters in relevant animal models. In this thesis, we will evaluate the mechanical behavior of the cross-linked SEP and of arterial samples from treated mouse models and a numerical model will be developed from experimental data to better predict treatment parameters.

The main tasks will be:

  1. Experimental tests will be carried out for characterizing the macroscopic mechanical properties of the SEP and of arteries treated with the SEP. The cross-linked SEP will be characterized using tensile tests with a customized device. Mechanical parameters of treated arteries will be assessed by measuring pressure-diameter curves from mouse arteries tested in a customized tension-inflation test.
  2. A multiscale numerical model of the mechanical behavior of arteries will be elaborated, taking into account their microstructural composition and morphology (bilayer, specific contributions of elastin, collagen, smooth muscle cells, possible proteoglycans) and including the effects of possible grafting of the SEP to the arterial wall. The model will be tested for arteries with competent elastic fibers, for arteries with damaged elastin and induced-tissue remodelling, and for arteries treated with the SEP.
  3. The experimental results obtained at task 1 will be used to evaluate and calibrate the prediction ability of the numerical model developed in task 2. Sensitivity analysis permitting to find the optimal treatment conditions with the SEP for different types of therapeutic targets will be addressed.

 

Candidate profile: Candidates with strong skills in mechanics (modeling and experimental) and biomechanics are expected. Motivation and interest in bioengineering applications is recommended.

 

How to apply:Send CV, cover letter and letters of recommendation to claire.morin@emse.fr and avril@emse.fr.