From the President
As many of you know I was appointed to the ESB presidency at the World Congress of Biomechanics in Dublin this July. It was a great honour to take this position. Mainly, because I am the first Spanish ESB president, second womanfemale (after Gwen Reilly) and it took place after the first ESB meeting held in Spain (Seville 2017).
Council members and new committee
In the General Assembly, as we had a packed schedule, I had little time to thank the outgoing president and vice president. Hanna Isaksson retired from the council after six years of service and we thank her for her time and commitment with the Society. During the last two years, she has been handling the awards. In fact, these last two years have been quite hard, because we have received a huge number of applications in all the award categories, which increased the difficulty of selecting the best works due to their high quality. She also took care of the Student committee for 4 years running the first mobility award. Particularly special thanks go to Stephen Ferguson for his outstanding contribution to the ESB and many years of service (around two decades!). Prior to his presidency, he took the treasurer role (one of the most difficult job on the ESB council), he was able to keep the accounts in order. He also served as chair of the EAMBES committee. Hanna – Stephen thanks for your fantastic work!
Of course, we need to give a warm welcome to two new council members. Before presenting them, I would like to thank all members who put themselves forward to serve on the council. This is the second time we have had electronic voting. We are very happy with the way it is working. This year the election was quite competitive, and more than 200 members voted. All the candidates had the chance to meet the ESB members at our booth so there was also a direct interaction with the candidates. As a result of the competitive election process, two new faces were elected to the council: Enrico Dall’Ara who has taken on the task of the student committee and Dieter Pahr who will be responAs many of you know I was appointed to the ESB presidency at the World Congress of Biomechanics in Dublin this July. It was a great honour to take this position. Mainly, because I am the first Spanish ESB president, second womanfemale (after Gwen Reilly) and it took place after the first ESB meeting held in Spain (Seville 2017).sible of the publication committee. Sara Checa, Markus Heller and Harry van Lenthe were re-elected. Therefore, our council members have moved to new positions. I am very happy to welcome Luca Cristofolini as our vice-president who will be managing more rounds of awards. Markus Heller who as secretary general will welcome new members to the society. Harry van Lenthe will be our new treasurer and will send you kind payment reminders 😊. For the rest of the council we are very pleased that David Mitton will taking care of the meetings committee, dealing with the organization of our annual congresses and endorsed meetings. Mark Thompson is appointed as the new chair of the meeting webportal committee and will help congress organizers on the development of the ESB web portal. Jérôme Noailly is the new chair of the membership and external affairs and will promote membership in the society and arrange affiliation of other societies and national chapters.
We have decided to create a new committee, the Scientific Communications Committee, and Sara Checa will chair it. This Commitee will be responsible for enhancing communication with and between ESB members promoting science and practice of Biomechanics. In its effort to regularly evaluate and improve communication with members. I remember the evolution of our Newsletter from the newspaper format to our actual on-line compilation of news. Without losing the Newsletter, which is useful to compile our activities, we understand that now more people (mainly our youngest members) interact using twitter and YouTube. We would like to push forward the creation of the ESB YouTube channel and inviting our Corporate members to use this tool to promote themselves among our members. Moreover, of course, offering webinars, experiences of our mobility awardee to other ESB members, promotion of our future congresses, presentation of our ESB labs and their projects, etc. If you would like to participate or have related ideas, please contact us.
We have also a new student committee who will be actively involved organising student activities and events mainly in the upcoming ESB conferences: Laura Baumgartner, Miguel Angel Ariza Gracia, Edoardo Borgiani, Gabriele Nasello, Ehsan Soodmand, Rodrigo Romarowski and Matteo Zago. Welcome on board!
It is time to prepare contributions for Vienna 2019
Time is running quite fast, and our 25th Congress will be held in Vienna (Austria) next July 7-10. In Lyon 2016, we were celebrating 40 years of the European Society of Biomechanics and our Vienna team (Philipp Thurner, Christian Hellmich and Dieter Pahr) is now preparing the 25th Congress! This will be an exciting conference: an outstanding scientific team of presenters identifying the new challenges to be addressed, cutting edge stimulation for our students and young researchers and opportunities for networking across the whole ESB family and beyond. The venue will be at the University of Vienna in the magnificent main building. Call for abstracts is already open but also the call for awards will open soon. This year we will have the Huiskes Medal for Biomechanics which was created in 2012 by the ESB to honour the lifetime of service that Prof. Huiskes gave to biomechanics. Our members must nominate the candidate. Deadline is approaching (December 1st). You can have a look to the regulations here.
We hope you find this newsletter interesting and informative. As usual we welcome feedback!
Maria Angeles Pérez Ansón, Zaragoza 2018.
