ESBiomech24 Congress in Edinburgh

ESBiomech Newsletter Autumn 2019

We are pleased to present the Autumn 2019 news updates from the European Society of Biomechanics. In this newsletter, we summarized the main activities of the ESB in the last six months. 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.

Dieter Pahr, Chair of  the Publication Committee

From the President

Thanks to Vienna team and all participants of ESB conference 2019, it is time to prepare contributions for Milano 2020 and what is next after H2020 … Horizon Europe

Maria Angeles Pérez Ansón, ESB President

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Remembering Ivars Knets 1938-2019

I was informed only recently that Prof Ivars Knēts died on March 1st, 2019. A short biography is available on Wikipedia. There is more information on his web page at the Latvian Academy of Science web site.

Prof Marco Viceconti, University of Bologna

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Meeting News

26th Congress of the European Society of Biomechanics, 12-15 July 2020, Milan, Italy

In 2020 the 26th Congress of ESB will be held in Milan, Italy. The congress will take place at the Politecnico di Milano from 12 – 15 July 2020.

NEW!!! Two deadlines for Perspective Talks are available: 30 November 2019 and 31 January 2020. Accepted Perspective Talks submitted by 30 November will be announced before the regular abstract deadline (31st January 2020).

For additional information see esbiomech2020.org

Save the Date ESB 2021: Maastricht
In 2021 the 27th 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 11-14 July 2021. ESBiomech2021 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.

Save the Date ESB 2022: Porto
In 2022 the 28th 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.

Call for bids ESB 2023
The ESB invites proposals for the organization of its annual congress in 2023. If you would like to host and organize the 2023 ESB congress and wish to prepare and submit a bid, please read the conference rules.

Interested members can contact or send a proposal/bid to Prof. David Mitton, Chair of the Meetings Committee (david.mitton(at)ifsttar.fr).

The deadline for bid submission (first step) to organize the ESB 2023 is 15 December 2019.

Endorsed meetings
Advanced International School on Imaging, Modelling and Simulation in Biomechanics and Mechanobiology
24-28 February 2020
Rome, Italy
www.unicampus.it/advanced-school
The School will instruct on the importance of a rigorous and multidisciplinary approach for the effective translation of biomechanics models into the clinical practice. Six internationally-outstanding invited lecturers have been selected for covering topics that span from imaging, through theoretical biomechanics, up to computational biomechanics and mechanobiology: Vikram Deshpande, Christian Gasser, Daniel Hurtado, Bruno Quesson, Zohar Yosibash and Alessandro Veneziani.
Classes on basic notions in the morning will prepare attendants to lectures on advanced tohe 26th Congress of ESB will be held in Milan, Italy. The congress will take pics in the afternoon on a wide range of applications. One session will be dedicated to talks from participants and one day will propose a series of Advanced seminars.

ESB members will receive a 20% reduction on registration fees.

More information are available on the attached flyer and on the web-site www.unicampus.it/advanced-school
Organisers: Alessio Gizzi, Michele Marino, Giuseppe Vairo
Flyer:
UCBM_Advanced_International_School-1-1Download

MultiSim/OATech+ Modelathon
13-16 January 2020
Sheffield, UK
http://multisim-he 26th Congress of ESB will be held in Milan, Italy. The congress will take insigneo.org/modelathon/
A one-day symposium (free of charge) followed by a three-day modelling competition on combining experimental and computational research on multi-scale approaches to patient- specific musculoskeletal and finite element modelling.

ESB members will receive a 20% reduction on registration fees.

1st Course on Translational Research and Commercialization of Medical Devices
6-8 November 2019
Leuven, Belgium
http://trans-comet.com/
ESB members will receive a 20% reduction on registration fees.

Other meeting
2020 Summer Biomechanics, Bioengineering, and Biotransport Conference (SB3C 2020)
17-20 June 2020
Vail, Colorado, USA
www.sb3c.org

David Mitton, Chair of the Meetings Committee

ESB Awards

Prizes and Honours Awarded during ESB 2019 in Vienna

We once again congratulate all the awardees for their important scientific contributions.

Huiskes Medal 2019:

Ralph Müller, Professor of Biomechanics at ETH Zürich, Switzerland

Best Doctoral Thesis 2019:

The winner was Tommaso Ristori (TU Eindhoven, The Netherlands) for the PhD thesis “Computational analysis of cell-mediated remodeling of collagenous tissues” (Supervisors: Frank P.T. Baaijens, Vikram S. Deshpande, Sandra Loerakker)

The Runners-up for this award were:

Student Award 2019:

The award paper was: Alix Whelan (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland) “Bovine pericardium leaflet failure: investigating the relationship between damage and calcification”

The Runners-up for this award were:

Best Poster Award 2019:

The award was assigned to the poster by Angela Semitela (University of Aveiro, Portugal) et al “Electrosprayed cells proliferative behaviour in a 3D microporous scaffold”.

Travel Awards:

The purpose of the Travel Awards is to financially help young researchers to participate at the ESB Congress.  Nineteen Travel Awards were assigned in 2019:

Reviewers

The time and effort required for reviewing the extensive material submitted to these various awards is considerable. We would therefore like to thank all of the reviewers who have been involved in this year’s awards for making my task easy.  There was very little convincing or chasing involved, and yet there has been fair and objective discussion in order to ensure the correct decisions. The service of the reviewers definitely contributes to the scientific quality of our Society and of our Congresses.  We are very grateful to you all.

ESB Mobility Award 2019 

The Mobility award this year was assigned to:

This award is administered and reported by the student committee 

Call for applications for Prizes and Honours for ESB 2020

Please be aware that the award application deadlines for the up-coming congress in Milan are approaching.  ESB will be presenting the following awards: The SM Perren Award, the Best Doctoral Thesis Award, as well as several awards based on abstract submission including Clinical Biomechanics Award, Student Award, Best Poster Award, and many Travel Awards.  The deadline for all awards, except SM Perren and Best Doctoral Thesis award, coincides with the abstract submission deadline for the ESB Congress (31 January 2020). For all awards based on conference abstract, please ensure you check the submission box during abstract submission and submit the additional required documents.

I look forward to receiving your high quality submissions to the awards over the coming months, as well as to seeing you all in Milan in July 2020.

SM Perren Award  – Application deadline 31 January 2020. 

Please consider submitting your latest work as an original article choosing the SM Perren Award to Journal of Biomechanics latest by January 31. For more information, please see the Perren award webpage.

Best Doctoral Thesis Award – Application deadline 31 January 2020

Applications are submitted via email to the award chair. For more information, please see the best doctoral thesis award webpage.

All the Awards below are based on abstract submission and each abstract can only be submitted for one award.  All deadlines coincide with the deadline for Congress Abstract submission. 

Clinical Biomechanics Award – Application deadline 31 January 2020

Please ensure you check the submission box during abstract submission and attach the additional required documents. For more information, please see the  Clinical Biomechanics award webpage.

ESB Student Award – Application deadline 31 January 2020

Four finalists will be selected to present and compete about the Award in a dedicated session during the yearly ESB Congress in Milan.  Please ensure you check the submission box during abstract submission and attach the additional required documents. For more information, please see the Student Award webpage.

ESB Poster Award– Application deadline 31 January 2020

The ESB Poster Award is given at each ESB Congress with the purpose of promoting the quality of poster presentations at the meeting. The selection is made during the Congress, by an Poster Award Committee.  For more information, please see the Poster award page.

ESB Travel Awards – Application deadline 31 January 2020

Around 20 Travel Awards will be awarded by the ESB for attending the ESB congress. Please ensure you check the submission box during abstract submission and attach the additional required documents. For more information, please see the Travel Award webpage.

Luca Cristofolini , Vice President of the ESB and Chair of the Awards Committee

ESB Education and Student Committee

ESB Webinar series

In 2019 we have started a new ESB Webinar series dedicated to open source software for biomechanical application:

No.01 – Learn how to use SimVascular

No.02 -Jumping into musculoskeletal modelling with OpenSim

Recordings of all webinars can be visualised by subscribing to the ESB You Tube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/c/ESBiomech

Winners Mobility Award 2019

Congratulations to the winners of the Mobility Award 2019!!!!

Ehsan Soodmand from Charitè Berlin, Germany to TU Eindhoven, Netherlands

Amelie Sas from KU Leuven, Belgium to ETH Zurich, Switzerland

stay tuned for the call of the Mobility Award 2020!

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)

Contact us (https://esbiomech.org/student-section/) if you have any job to be advertised.

Enrico Dall’Ara, Chair of the Education and Student Committee

Membership News

With a total of 170 new application in 2019, the ESB has a total of 1360 regular members; 762 Active Member, 525 Student Members, 8 Corporate Members, and 65 Senior and Honorary Members.
Detailed information about the types of ESB membership

Gender balance among ESB members

According to our archives, the overall gender balance of the ESB is fair, with only 33% of women since the creation of the society. These numbers clearly indicate that additional efforts are necessary to foment the role of women in our society. However, a closer look at the statistics of new memberships per period of times brings some optimistic perspectives. Within the ten first years of existence of the ESB (1976-1985), about one third of the new members were women. In the US, women were estimated to represent only 17% of all academic researchers by 1989, suggesting that the ESB was largely above average at that time, despite its fair parity numbers. Surprisingly, the rate of women as new members dropped below 25% around 2010 and was only around 27% in 2015. But after 2015, the relative number of new women members increased to 37%, and in 2019, 42% of the new applicants were women. It took a long time, but it seems that we are approaching parity at a higher pace than 10 years ago, and this is the good news. As a colleague of mine used to says: “we are not well, but we are going well”

New Honorary Member

During the 2019 Conference of the ESB in Vienna, Prof Marie-Christine Ho Ba Tho, from the University of Technology of Compiègne (UTC), France, has been nominated Honorary Member of the ESB. Marie-Christine has been a pioneer in patient-specific biomechanical modelling, deriving organ geometry, tissue mechanical properties and external loads from medical images. Her research carrier grew highly multidisciplinary, combining musculoskeletal system biomechanics and computer science to focus on error propagation and on computer-assisted systems for diagnosis. She has been highly committed to the ESB, having served in the Council for eight years, from 1996 to 2004. Marie Christine has been Vice President of the ESB, from 2000 to 2004, and remarkably, she has been the promoter of the ESB Student Award, one of the major awards of our society that recognises the excellence of the ESB early carrier researchers.
Marie-Christine is our 16th Honorary ESB Member and the second woman to receive the Honorary Membership after Monique Donkerwolcke in 2012. Congratulations and thank you Marie-Christine!

Full list of the ESB Honorary Members

From left to right: Maria-Angeles Pérez Ansón (President of the ESB), Marie-Christine Ho Ba Tho (ESB Honorary Member) and Luca Cristofolini (Vice President of the ESB)

Members from Low Income Countries

During the last Council meeting, it was decided to offer members from Low Income Countries a fee reduction of 80%, in an attempt to further reduce the economic barriers that might prevent researchers from certain countries to benefit from an ESB membership.  This fee reduction is not automatic and shall be granted for a renewable period of one year, only upon explicit request, supported by an affiliation certificate. All the information is available on the updated Membership Benefits webpage.

Jérôme Noailly, Chair of the Membership Committee

ESB National Chapters & External Affairs News

ESB National Chapters

ESB Italian National Chapter (ESB-ITA)

The IX ESB-ITA Annual Meeting took place in Bologna from September 30th to October 1st, 2019. The event has been organised by Luca Cristofolini, Rita Stagni, Maria Cristina Bisi and Marco Palanca, and has gathered nearly 100 delegates. The Meeting included several keynote lectures by Marco Viceconti (In Silico Trials: Present, Future, Open Challenge), Blanca Rodriguez (Human in Silico Trials in Cardiac Pharmacology) and Luca Emili (InSilicoTrial: Modeling and Simulation from Lab to Market). A Master Thesis Award Session was held for the youngest researchers, and three other awards were given for the Best Oral Presentation (Emanuele Vignali), The Best Thematic Presentation (Giulia Luraghi) and The Best Poster Presentation (Katia Capellini and Pierfrancesco Gaziano).

ESB Spanish National Chapter (CAP-ESB)

The 9th meeting of the CAP-ESB  was held in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, on October 24-25th, 2019. It was organized by Alejandro Yánez Santana, Óscar Martel Fuentes, Alberto Cuadrado Hernández, María Paula Fiorucci and Ana María Fortes Gálvez. During the first day, a  course about the Industry 4.0 in Biomedical Engineering and Implant Design was hosted. Overall, the meeting gathered 45 delegates and hosted 35 abstract presentations plus a round table on 3D printed implant solutions in musculoskeletal repair, with the participation of Maria Ángeles Pérez Ansón (ITN-EID Curabone), David Pérez Alonso (Hospital Universitario Insular de Gran Canaria) and Donato Monopoli Forleo (Canary Islands Institute of Technology). An awards session was organized, and the winners were Víctor Antonio Carmona-Ortiz, Gil Serrancoli, Maite Ríos and Eduardo Villamor. Finally, the new Executive Committee of the CAP-ESB was elected and is composed by Alejandro Yánez Santana (University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria), Rosa Pàmies Vilà (Polytechnique University of Catalonia, Barcelona-Tech) and Francico Romero Sánchez (University of Extremadura).

ESB Affiliated Societies

Virtual Physiological Human Institute (VPHi)

An Affiliation agreement was signed between the VPHi and the ESB, during the ESB Conference in Vienna. Both societies agreed to mutually promote their respective activities. The list of common actions shall be revised every year, but it currently includes:

List of Scientific Societies affiliated with the ESB

Corporate News

Beta CAE Systems

Fluid structure interaction simulations on transcatheter aortic valve implantation using ANSA pre-processor and META post-processor

Bioengineering analyses pose difficult challenges to CAE simulations since the geometries are usually irregular and not easily represented while material properties are inhomogeneous, anisotropic, and nonlinear.

Drawing its expertise through the intensive application and development for many industries, BETA CAE Systems products suite addresses such challenges offering a complete toolbox for biomechanics pre- and post-processing.

One of the most recent applications of BETA CAE Systems software relates to the Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI), which is a minimally invasive procedure that is being increasingly adopted in the treatment of valvular diseases. In fact, it constitutes a solution for patients with significant contraindications for standard surgery. The procedure consists of the insertion of a stented valve in the aortic root using a catheter. The heart valve (from biological tissue) is mounted within a stent made by a Nitinol super-elastic alloy.

The research aimed at the comparison of different implantation scenarios with different device sizes and orientation using FSI simulations.

Read the full article and the results on BETA’s website:

https://www.beta-cae.com/pdf/2019_cae_conference_luraghi_Iannetti.pdf

Ansys

We are glad that Ansys has renewed its commitment with the ESB, and we would like to welcome Thierry Marchal as the new contact person at Ansys. Thierry is the Industry Director for Healthcare, Construction and Consumer Products at ANSYS, and since 2018 he is the Secretary General of the Avicenna Alliance, a not-for-profit association of healthcare stakeholders. The common objective of ANSYS and the Avicenna Alliance is to foment the uptake of computer modelling and simulations, also known as In Silico Medicine, in the healthcare sector. In such context, Thierry is particularly active in promoting the exploitation of computational biomechanical models. Blog of Thierry Marchal at Ansys

Jérôme Noailly, Chair of the Membership Committee

Corporate members of the ESB:

AMTI force and motion logo
BERTEC logo
Beta CAE logo
BoB Biomechanics logo
Materialise logo
Nobel Biocare logo