ESBiomech Newsletter Spring 2012

Dear Subscriber,

We are pleased to present our first fully on-line European Society of Biomechanics newsletter within our new website. Many thanks to our commercial webmaster CookandKaye and the voluntary efforts of Lutz Durselen and Anita Ignatius. To date we have continued with our traditional content for both the website and the newsletter within the new design. However we now have increased functionality and the ability to do more adventurous things so please contact us with ideas of items you would like to see on our website and newsletter and these will be considered as the society contiues to expand. If you do not wish to recieve mailings including the newsletter and other updates from the European Society of Biomechanics you can update your settings in the membership section of the website here:

For a printed verison of the newsletter click the link below to view the newsletter in your internet browser and use the browser’s print function.

I hope you find the newsletter useful and informative and look forward to seeing you in Lisbon.

Gwen Reilly – publication.chair@esbiomech.org

[READ-ONLINE]

Contents:

Letter from the President
18th Congress of the European Society of Biomechanics
Meeting Announcements: 19th congress of the European Society of Biomechanics and endorsed meetings
Award Announcements
ESB Council elections 2012
EAMBES Update
Student’s corner
Membership news

Society news and exclusive book offer

Letter from the President:

With this new electronic format of the Newsletter I am close to the end of my mandate and therefore this President’s address will be the last one from me. As such I would like to report to you on the Council activities undertaken in the last two years.

First, many of you will have noticed the new look of the ESB web site (www.esbiomech.org). Since January 2012 the maintenance contract of the ESB web site has been given to CookandKaye with a major reorganization of the web site from an aesthetic and functional point of view. In addition to providing a better navigation capability, the new web site is more secure and was prepared for the new format of the Newsletter and the ongoing changes regarding the renewal of the ESB fee membership. This implementation was kindly coordinated by Anita Ignatius and Lutz Durselen to whom I am very grateful. As usual Gwendolen Reilly did a great job during these last two years to edit the Newsletters and introduce the electronic Newsletter. The format of the Newsletter is now more functional to read directly using your email software.

All these changes are linked to the continuous growth of the membership. There are now more than 800 members which are twice as much than in 2005. This success also means more administrative work for our Secretary General and Treasurer. Therefore with the new internal structure of the web site we are working with a professional company that will take care of the management of new members, membership renewal, journal subscription, etc… With this new management structure the members should get a more professional service while the Secretary General and the Treasurer will see their administrative tasks reduced freeing them time to discuss strategic actions within the Society. I can tell you that the last two years have been very busy for Gabriele Dubini and Hans van Oosterwyck, with the process of more than 200 new members in one year and a half; i.e. almost one new member ever 2 days!

In relation to the membership increase the previous Council decided to organize the ESB Congress on an annual basis. This also requires a more systematic approach in the preparation of the annual congresses coordinated by Peter Zioupos. Our next congress will be in Lisbon on 1-4 July 2012 where we expect a massive participation and an excellent scientific and social programme. The following congress will be in Patras (Greece) on 25-28 August 2013 chaired by Yannis Missirlis. For 2014 we will join efforts with the World Council of Biomechanics by organizing the ESB congress jointly with WCB in Boston on 6-11 July 2014 in order to give a very high visibility to European biomechanics at this world conference. In 2015 we will introduce our professional manager in the local organization of the congress in order to standardize some of our annual activities like web site presentation and hosting, congress registration, and reviewing process for the abstracts. One of these changes will already be introduced in Lisbon with the possibility to include the payment of your membership for 2013 within the congress fees. This has been a request by many members to ease the administrative renewal of the membership and to be able to claim back the membership fees more easily within your own institution. I hope that this will be a great benefit to many of you.

One of the main benefits of increased membership is the generation of higher income, which enables us to provide a more professional service to the members but also to increase our awards programme. This year, under the coordination of Jose Manuel Garcia Aznar, we introduced two new awards to the existing six awards. First our most prestigious award will be the Huiskes Medal for Biomechanics given to a biomechanician who made an outstanding career contribution to the field. I am very pleased to announce to you that our first recipient of this award is Prof. Georg Bergmann who will give a plenary lecture on his achievements at the next ESB congress in Lisbon. Our second new award is the Best Doctoral Thesis that recognizes the development of an outstanding doctoral final thesis that has contributed to the advancement of the theory and/or applications of biomechanics. The first awardee is Sandra Loerakker who will also give a plenary lecture at the ESB congress. Finally, we have increased the travel awards from 8 to 20 in order to enable PhD students and post-docs in their early career to attend the congress and present their work.

The student membership is still one with the greatest potential for growth and attention within the Society. An active group of students participate in the Facebook profile of the Society while specific activities addressed to student members will be organized during the next ESB congress. Bill Taylor has actively worked with the organizers and the students to provide social and networking activities, as well as industrial contact for the student members. Dominique Pioletti is also working actively in providing services to our industrial members (Baasys, EnginSoft, Materialise, Paris orthotics and Instron). If you have any industrial contact interested in becoming a member of the ESB, please forward it to us.

One of the important activities of the Council is to reach out to other societies and organizations. In particular the Society is keen to support its members to establish a structure at the national level. At the last General Assembly the members voted for the possibility to create national chapters of the ESB. Since then the Council agreed on the creation of the Italian and the Spanish National Chapters. A report on their activities will be given during the next General Assembly. Outside the ESB we have reinforced our links with other societies thanks to the work of Anita Ignatius. The ESB is now affiliated to the German Society of Biomechanics and is in the process of being affiliated with the Hellenic Society of Biomechanics. We have also organized joint symposia at the TERMIS Tissue Engineering conference and at the European Society for Biomaterials conference. The ESB will also organize a symposium at the Combined Meeting of Orthopaedic Research Societies on 13-16 October 2013. Finally, Stephen Ferguson has had the demanding task of summarizing to you in each newsletter the activities of the European Alliance for Medical and Biological Engineering & Science (EAMBES). The EAMBES acts as a representative body for the biomedical engineering societies and educational institutions to improve the health, wealth and well-being of the people at the European level. The ESB is well represented within the EAMBES with Marco Viceconti as current President, Keita Ito as Treasurer and myself as recently elected within the Council. One of the direct results that the ESB members benefited from the EAMBES action is the support of the Virtual Physiological Human initiative by the European Commission.

I hope that through this dense summary of activities you can see that the whole council has been really active in the development of the Society. I interpret that the considerable number of candidates for the next Council election (15 in total including Bill and Gwen who stand for reelection, for the full list of candidates) is a sign of the vibrant and healthy situation of the Society in general.

I must say that I am particularly happy for all of the 8 years that I have spent on the Council of the ESB. It has been a rich human experience and I am thankful to all the Councilors who have shared their passion and dynamism during all this time. I think that there is no better description of my vision for the ESB and our discipline than something that Carlo Revelli [1] wrote:

It is the rebellion of previous generations against received world visions, their efforts to think new thoughts, that have formed our world. Our vision of the world, our realities, are their dreams accomplished. There is no reason to be afraid of the future: we can continue to rebel, to dream of other possible worlds, and to look for them.

See you in Lisbon!

Damien Lacroix

[1] Carlo Revelli, What is Time? What is Space?, Di Renzo Editore, ISBN: 9788883231465

18^th Congress of the European Society of Biomechanics

1^st– 4^th July, 2012, Lisbon, Portugal

EARLY REGISTRATION DEADLINE – MAY 30th 2012

The 18^th Congress of the European Society of Biomechanics will be hosted by Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal. The Congress will take place at the Congress Centre of IST, located in the civil engineering building of the Alameda campus. IST is the School of Engineering of the Technical University of Lisbon (UTL) and is located at a convenient distance from hotels, restaurants and diverse cultural sites. Being close to the centre of Lisbon, IST is easily reached by metro, bus, taxi or car from any location in town, including the airport (located only 10 minutes away by taxi).

The Congress will open on Sunday, the 1^st of July, with two pre-courses of interest to graduate students, postdocs, and young researchers. The main Congress programme will span from Monday, the 2^nd, to Wednesday, the 4^th of July and will feature different tracks of presentations from delegates.

Pre-courses:

Pre-Course A – Movement Biomechanics: Computational and Laboratorial techniques (limited to 25 participants)

Coordinated by Jorge Ambrósio and Miguel Silva. Course lecturers: Jorge Ambrósio and Miguel Silva.

Pre-Course B – Cell Biomechanics and Mechanobiology

Coordinated by Christopher Jacobs and Paulo Fernandes. Course lecturers: Ben Fabry, Christopher Jacobs, Peter Butler, Sanjay Kumar, Xavier Trepat.

Plenary speakers:

Gerhard Holzapfel, Graz University of Technology

Ton van den Bogert, Orchard Kinetics, Cleveland

James Iatridis, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York

Registration:

Early registration until the 30^th of May is advised to benefit from the congress reduced fee. The registration fee covers congress bag, proceedings, lunches, coffee breaks and welcome reception. The registration fee also includes a one-year ESB membership, valid until the end of 2013 for ESB members who have paid their 2012 membership, or until the end of 2012 for non-members willing to apply for ESB membership. More detailed information available at the Congress webpage.

Please note that only the abstracts whose presenting author has paid the registration fee by 30^th of May will be scheduled in the conference program and included in the proceedings.

Proceedings:

The abstracts presented in ESB2012 will be published online by Elsevier as a supplement of the Journal of Biomechanics. A CD with this material will be available for each participant in the conference bag.

Social events:

The social programme will include a welcome reception on Sunday evening, a cultural event for students on Monday evening and the Congress banquet on Tuesday. The banquet will take place on a venue with a fabulous view over Lisbon.

MANY THANKS TO THE SPONSORS OF ESB2012

Confirmed Sponsors to date:

AMTI – CGD – C-Motion – Contemplas – Delsys – Kistler – Materialise – MTS – myon prophysics – NDI -Taylor & Francis Group – Routledge – Royal Society Publishing – Sawbones – Sensix – Timberlake

Brief Note on Biomechanics in Portugal:

The Biomechanics field in Portugal gained some importance during the decade of 1980, mainly due to the work developed in the Faculty of Human Kinetics (FMH) of the Technical University of Lisbon and the Laboratory of Biomechanics of the Gulbenkian Institute of Science. It leads to the foundation of the Portuguese Society of Biomechanics and Biomaterials (SPBB) in 1988 by a group of Faculty members of this institution lead by Professor Kelo Correia da Silva.

Although there were some scarce works in the eighties, only in the early nineties the musculoskeletal biomechanics including movement, hard and soft tissue biomechanics starts to be an area of research in engineering schools, both at the Instituto Superior Técnico of the Technical University of Lisbon and Porto University involving Mechanical and Civil Engineering Departments. In that decade sports biomechanics remained active not only in Lisbon but also in the Faculty of Sports at Porto University.

In the beginning of the present century Biomechanics in Portugal expanded very fast with the formation of research groups in various universities, namely in the University of Aveiro and University of Coimbra and also in some Polytechnic schools such as the Polythecnique Institute of Leiria. This boom in Biomechanics research was accompanied by the creation of undergraduate and graduate programmes on Biomedical Engineering some of them in tight collaboration with Medical Schools.

As the result of this growing Biomechanics research and with the objective of increasing awareness of the field and promoting collaborative research the SPBB organized the First National Congress on Biomechanics in Martinchel, in February 2005. Following the success of this first meeting the second one was organized in Évora in 2007 and the third in Bragança in 2009. In this congress it was decided to rename the society to Portuguese Society of Biomechanics (SPB). The Fourth Congress was held in Coimbra in 2011 with about 150 delegates. The next one is schedule to February 2013 in Espinho.

The research on biomechanics has been expressed by the numerous PhD thesis developed in this area, the increasing number of published papers and research projects, most of them funded by the Portuguese Foundations for Science and Technology. The work developed by the Portuguese research on this field has been also recognized by the international community with the organization of the XXIX Conference of the International Society of Biomechanics in Sports (ISBS201) in Porto and the organization of the 18^thCongress of the European Society of Biomechanics (ESB2012) next July in Lisbon.

Paulo Fernandes

Save the date ESB 2013:

The 19th ESB Congress will be held at the Conference Center of the University of Patras, in Patras, Greece from August 25 till 28, 2013.

The organizers are trying to put together a program that will include all the traditional areas of biomechanics with an emphasis to provide for an integral appreciation across many scales: from molecular biomechanics to the dynamics and kinetics to the whole organism, including the applications of biomechanics to areas such as biomaterials and tissue engineering.

At the end of August in this part of Greece the temperature is around 30-32 degrees Celsius, blue skies, and beautiful views to the close-by sea and mountains. That is to say, during the coffee and lunch breaks, after the attendance of the excellent scientific program we hope to put together, a refreshing interval will provide for our continuing scientific encounters.

The area is ideal for combining with a few days of vacations: an excellent archeological museum with findings from the 10th century b.c. to the roman times, beaches 3 kms away from the conference venue (many hotels on the seafront), wineries, Ancient Olympia and Delphi 75 min. away and much more.

We extend a warm welcome to all prospective participants promising a fruitful combination of excellent science and traditional Greek hospitality.

Endorsed Meeting:

International Conference of the Polish Society of Biomechanics-2012
16-19 Sept 2012, Bialystok, Poland
Website: www.biomechanics2012.pb.edu.pl/

Award announcements:

One of the missions of the European Society of Biomechanics is to promote excellence in biomechanics research; with this objective in mind, the ESB Council is supporting prestigious awards given at the ESB Congress. This last year, the ESB launched two new awards: the Huiskes Medal for Biomechanics and the Best Doctoral Thesis in Biomechanics.

The Huiskes Medal for Biomechanics will be given to senior researchers who have contributed significantly to biomechanics throughout their careers. The award is open to both members and non-members of the ESB, who must be nominated by at least two ESB members. This year we will have the honor of presenting the Award to one of the best worldwide researchers in biomechanics: Professor Georg Bergmann, currently co-director of the Julius Wollf Institute (Berlin, Germany). Prof. Bergmann has contributed a lifetime of dedication to the field of Biomechanics in which he has pioneered technologies to allow the in vivo measurement of joint contact forces. This data has been continually and openly shared with the entire biomechanics community free of change, and has therefore guided the design and development of countless implants and prostheses. Within his career, Georg has authored over 200 peer reviewed articles in internationally recognised journals, including the single most cited manuscript in the journal of Biomechanics. He has won numerous awards, including the SM Perren award, ESB research award, Ceramtec award, German Spine Society award for Biomechanics, DGOOC award for basic science and Low-lands biomechanics award and AE research award. Georg played a key role on the council of the ESB, as a member from 1990-1994, as well as hosting the 1986 5th biennial ESB congress in Berlin. Prof. Bergmann will present his recent results in a presentation in the next ESB Congress in Lisbon during the special session on the Tuesday 3^rd of July at 14.45.

The Best Doctoral Thesis in Biomechanics aims to recognize the development of an outstanding doctoral final thesis that has contributed to the advancement of the theory and/or applications of Biomechanics. The awards committee were delighted with the high quality of the submissions which indicate that many excellent young researchers are coming into this field and into our society. This first year we have received a total of 22 candidates for the award. Finally, after evaluation of all the candidates, the corresponding committee decided the winner is Sandra Loerakker (Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, the Netherlands) with the PhD thesis entitled: “The relative contributions of muscle deformation and ischaemia to pressure ulcer development” under the supervision of Prof. F.P.T. Baaijens and D.L. Bader. She will present her work during the ESB Conference in Lisbon on the Wednesday 4^thof July at 10.30.

In addition, the ESB also continues with the traditional awards that have been promoted over the years: SM Perren Research Award, ESB Clinical Biomechanics Award, ESB Student Award, ESB Poster Award and ESB Travel Award.

The SM Perren Research Award is given for the best original research paper that is previously unpublished. Indeed, this award will be given to the first author of the best scientific paper submitted to the Chairman of the Award Committee. This year we have received a high number of works with a high scientific quality, in total 14 original research works. The final winner is Stephen D. Thorpe (Trinity Centre for Bioengineering, School of Engineering, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland) with the work entitled: “The external mechanical environment can override the influence of local substrate in determining stem cell fate” and the co-authors are: Conor T. Buckley, Andrew J. Steward, Daniel J. Kelly. Stephen will defend his work in Lisbon on the Monday 2^nd July at 14.45.

The ESB Clinical Biomechanics Award aims to foster the application of Biomechanics to clinically oriented problems. This year the four candidates for this award are:

• Alina Levchuk. Large scale simulations of trabecular bone adaptation to loading and treatment. Institute for Biomechanics, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
• Kevin Moerman. Non-invasive analysis of the mechanical properties of skeletal muscle tissue in-vivo. Trinity Centre for Bioengineering, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and Radiology Department, Academic Medical Centre, The Netherlands.
• Philip Damm. In vivo measurements of the friction moment in total hip joint prostheses during walking. Julius Wolff Institute, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany.
• Leen Lenaerts. Quantification of training effects on femoral bone quality using patient-specific FE analysis. Biomechanics Section, K.U.Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.

The ESB Student Award aims to recognize research excellence in biomechanics already at a relatively young age. This year we received a total of 20 candidates, where the four selected finalists are:

• Aurélie Carlier. Tip cells at the top: a mutiscale model of sprouting angiogenesis. K.U.Leuven, Biomechanics Section, Belgium.
• Daria Cosentino. Unilateral pulmonary artery stenosis: a patient-specific fluid dynamics analysis. UCL – Mechanical Engineering Department, UK.
• Johan Kerkhofs. Bridging the gap: a theoretical model of mechanotransduction through ERK signalling. Biomechanics Research Unit, U.Liège, Belgium.
• Sabrina Y Jauch. Low CCD-angles cause higher micromotions at the neck taper junction of bi-modular hip stems. Institute of Biomechanics, TUHH Hamburg University of Technology, Germany.

Finally, the ESB Poster and Travel Awards will be anounced during the 18th Congress of the European Society of Biomechanics (ESB2012) that will be held at the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal, on 1st to 4th July 2012.

I would not like to end the presentation of all the ESB Awards without acknowledging all the members of the Committee Awards for their work. Their professionalism and commitment have been fundamental for the success evaluation and selection process.

José Manuel García Aznar

Council Elections 2012:

Election to the Society Council will take place during the General Assembly to be held in Lisbon on Mon. July 2^nd, 2012.

Two members of the current Council will stand for re-election:

Gwendolen Reilly

Gwendolen Reilly has a BSc in Biology and Geology from the University of Manchester and a DPhil in Biology from the University of York. She has conducted post-doctoral research at the ETH in Switzerland and three US Universities; Penn State, U Pennsylvania and U of Illinois at Chicago. These studies focused on bone cell mechanotransduction, bone and cartilage differentiation and biomaterials. She is currently a lecturer in Tissue Engineering at the University of Sheffield, specializing in bone mechanobiology and mechanical stimulation of tissue engineering matrix in 3D bioreactor culture. She has many transatlantic and European collaborations including with Jagiellonian University, Krakow, the University of Pisa, University of California San Diego. She has published 35 papers and 5 chapters/editorials in cell biology, biomechanics, bone and tissue engineering journals and is on the international editorial board of eCells and Materials and Scientifica. She has been a member of the ESB since beginning her PhD studies in bone biomechanics in 1994. She has previously received two awards from the ESB and joined the council to give something back to the society, she has served on the council for four years as publications chair and newsletter editor.

William R. Taylor

Bill achieved his degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Bath, England in 1994, where he also completed his Ph.D. in 1999 using finite element analyses for predicting changes in bone density after total hip replacement. Following six months researching at Sulzer Medica, Winterthur, Switzerland and one year at the Biomechanics Research Lab, Prince of Wales Hospital, Sydney, Australia, he moved to Germany in 2000 and now leads the research group “Functional Analysis” at the Julius Wolff Institute, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. His research aims to provide new approaches for quantifying functional outcome in patients with degenerative neurological and musculoskeletal diseases, both pre-operatively and after treatment – thereby opening perspectives on the objective evaluation of both medical engineering technologies and pharmaceutical therapies alike. His research has led to a number of international awards and its impact has also been reflected in some 60 peer-reviewed scientific papers that have received over 500 citations.

Bill has now been a member of the ESB council since 2008, having taken on the position of Chair of Student and Education Committee, and is now standing for re-election. During his mandate, Bill has successfully driven a number of student events, including industrial presentations, workshops and social events, and has managed to increase the number of student members in the society.

Thirteen Society members also applied for election:

Maria-Angeles Pérez Ansón

Maria-Angeles Pérez Ansón is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Zaragoza, Spain. She obtained her PhD in Computational Mechanics at the University of Zaragoza in 2004 with a thesis entitled simulation of cement deterioration and interfaces debonding in cemented hip implants, and it was award with the Best Technical Thesis of that year by the University of Zaragoza. She was a post-doctoral fellow at the Trinity Centre of Bioengineering (Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland) in 2004-2005 and at the Ecole de Technologie Superieure of the University of Quebec (Montreal, Canada) in 2007. She is a member of the I3A (Aragon Institute of Engineering Research). Her present research mainly focuses on Computational Modelling in Mechanobiology (mainly mechanics of hard tissues, design of prosthesis and implants), mechanobiology of skeletal tissue regeneration in healthy and pathological conditions (for example osteoporosis), non-linear finite element analysis and multiscale analysis. She is an author of 20 publications in peer- reviewed journals, several chapter books and more than 80 Contributions to International and National Conferences. Now, she is the current President of the Spanish National Chapter of the ESB since November 2011.

Luca Cristofolini

I earned my Master in Mechanical Engineering cum laude in 1992, and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering in 1995. Since 1995 I was a Research Assistant in Experimental Mechanics at the Engineering Faculty of the University of Bologna. I became an Associate Professor in Biomechanics since 2003. In 2010 I received the habilitation as full professor in Biomechanics. I serve as a Secretary of the PhD program in Biomedical Engineering, and I am in charge of the international relations. I am responsible of 4 Erasmus exchange projects for undergraduate and graduate students.

My research field covers experimental stress analysis and in vitro biomechanical simulations. My research is centered in orthopedic biomechanics, with a focus on two topics: (1) design and validation of implantable devices and (2) mechanical testing of bone structures. I have published over 130 papers in ISI indexed international journals. I am co-inventor in a European Patent. I won the Clinical Biomechanics award in 2002.

I am a Referee for several Journals in the field of Biomechanics. I have continuing research collaboration with Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli, and with several foreign Research Institutions. I played a role in over 26 national and 10 international research projects. I am a member of the Italian Association for stress Analysis (AIAS), of the Italian Society for Bioengineering (GNB), and of the European Society of Biomechanics (ESB), and a member of the Council of the Italian Chapter of the European Society of Biomechanics.

Paulo Rui Alves Fernandes

Paulo Fernandes is Assistant Professor with “Agregação” (Habilitation) at Mechanical Eng. Department of Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Technical University of Lisbon, where he received his PhD degree in 1998 and the “Agregação” in 2012. After the PhD he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Musculoskeletal Research Laboratory of Pennsylvania State University from July to December 1998. He was awarded with the IBM scientific prize 1997 (IBM- Portugal) with the work “Simulation of the Bone Remodelling Process”. His main research field is Biomechanics, particularly Bone Tissue Mechanics and Orthopaedic Implants Design. Paulo Fernandes teaches Computational Mechanics in the Biomedical Engineering Program since it started in IST. His research work has been an important contribution for the development of the Biomechanics in IST leading a research group with strong impact in the formation of human resources (a considerable number of Master and PhD Thesis). He has also led several research projects funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology with the most recent (2010-2013) on the “Development of scaffolds with controlled microstructure for bone tissue engineering”. He is author/co-author of numerous publications in international and national journal, book chapters, and communications in international conferences. He is also involved in the organisation of international symposia, with the highlight for the ESB2012 – 18th Congress of the European Society of Biomechanics to be held in Lisbon next July. He maintains international collaborations with research groups form Europe, Brazil and USA. He has been a member of the executive council of the Portuguese Society of Biomechanics since 2007.

Thomas Franz

Thomas Franz holds an MSc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Hanover, Germany (1992) and a PhD in Engineering on impact mechanics of fibre-reinforced composites from the University of Bremen, Germany (1998). Beginning of 2002, Thomas joined the Chris Barnard Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and heading the Biomechanical Sciences Group. At present, Thomas holds the position of Associate Professor.
Thomas’ research is concerned with cardiovascular biomechanics with current main focus on tissue regenerative vascular scaffolds and therapies for myocardial infarction. Thomas acts as reviewer for funding and research agencies and 12 international scientific journals. He is guest editor for the International Journal for Numerical Methods in Biomedical Engineering, regional editor (Africa) for the Journal of Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering and serves on the editorial board of Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering, International Journal of Numerical Methods in Biomedical Engineering, Journal of Biomaterials Application and Journal of Biological Research.
Thomas is also serving as Secretary General of Technical Group Computer Simulation, International Society of Biomechanics and is member of a number of international professional societies as well as scientific committees and advisory panels of international conferences.

Amit Gefen

Prof. Amit Gefen received the B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering and M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Tel Aviv University in 1994, 1997, and 2001, respectively. During 2002-2003 he was a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. He is currently an Associate Professor with the Dept. of Biomedical Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of Tel Aviv University. His research interests are in studying normal and pathological effects of biomechanical factors on the structure and function of cells, tissues and organs, with emphasis on the musculoskeletal system and applications in chronic wound research. On 2007-2008 he was a visiting scientist in Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands, where he developed tissue-engineered model systems to study pressure ulcers. To date, Prof. Gefen published more than 120 articles in peer-reviewed international journals, many of which on chronic wounds, and he also edited four books. He is now editing a book series on Mechanobiology, Tissue Engineering and Biomaterials published by Springer, and serving at Editorial Boards of several leading international journals, the Journal of Biomechanics, Clinical Biomechanics, Medical Engineering & Physics, Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering and the Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials, to mention a few.

David A. Hoey

David A. Hoey, born in Ireland in 1983, was educated at the University of Dublin, Trinity College where he received a 1.1 in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering and a PhD from the Trinity centre for Bioengineering. During his PhD, which focused on biomaterials, he published extensively in the leading journals in his field and his work was recognised with both national and international awards.
In 2009 he was awarded an INSPIRE IRCSET-Marie-Cure postdoctoral fellowship allowing him to continue his research in Columbia University in New York and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in the area of cell and molecular biomechanics, broadening his expertise in the field of biomechanics. His research in this area has also been published extensively and has been recognised with many international awards.
David Hoey has recently taken a position as Lecturer in Biomedical Engineering in the University of Limerick in February of this year where he is currently lecturing in areas of Orthopaedic Biomechanics and Mechanobiology and is building a research team to continue his work in the area of Mechanobiology. In addition to his research, David acts as reviewer for 9 international journals in the field of Biomechanics.

Cathy Holt

Dr Holt has a BEng Mechanical Engineering (UC Cardiff, 1988), and a PhD (Cardiff University, 1993), is a CEng and FIMechE.
Her research interests are in 3D motion analysis, biomechanics and orthopaedic engineering. Her research in the area of analysis and classification of joint function and novel applications of motion capture have led external grant support totalling £8 million. Her cross-disciplinary vision led to the co-coordination of the Arthritis Research UK Biomechanics and Bioengineering Centre which attracted £2.5M from Arthritis Research UK and £7.5M from 6 Cardiff University Schools. She is the Biomechanics, Motion Analysis and Rehabilitation Team Leader for the Centre. She provides research leadership on projects funded by Research Councils, Charity and Industry, has contributed over 100 refereed research papers and abstracts to International Journals and Conferences and referees for international journals. She was Guest Editor for the International Journal of Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering. She is a project reviewer for the EU, proposal evaluator for international and UK Research Councils, member of the EPSRC Peer Review College and an assessor for several charities.

Hanna E. Isaksson

Hanna Isaksson received her M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering and Material Science from Uppsala University, Sweden, in 2003, after spending her final year at University of Rochester, NY, USA. During her year in Rochester, her interests shifted towards mechanical modeling and biomechanics. She started pursuing her doctorate focusing on mechanobiological modeling of bone regeneration, in a collaborative project between AO Research institute in Davos, Switzerland and Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. After obtaining her Ph.D. degree in 2007, she spent three years as a post-doc at University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland. In the Biophysics of Bone and Cartilage group she was working on experimental methods to determine bone quality in metabolic bone diseases. In 2011 she returned to Sweden for an assistant professorship at Lund University, where she has a dual appointment in Solid mechanics and Orthopedics. She lectures in engineering mechanics and biomechanics. Her biomechanics research group is focusing on functional imaging and statistical shape modeling of bone, as well as on improvement of bone quality during fracture repair. She has authored over 30 peer-reviewed scientific papers (> 260 citations), and has been an ESB member since 2006.

Dennis Wilhelm Janssen

Dennis Janssen received his degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Twente, The Netherlands in 2002. He started working on the PhD project “Macro- and micro-mechanics of cemented total hip arthroplasty”, at the Orthopaedic Research Lab of the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He studied failure processes of cemented hip joint replacements, analyzing aspects related to implant design and surgical techniques and their effect on implant failure. In 2007 he worked at the SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY, at the lab of prof. Kenneth Mann. Dennis completed his PhD in 2009, after which he continued to work in Nijmegen.
Currently, he is responsible for the daily supervision of PhD-students working in the field of biomechanics. His main areas of interest are biomechanical analyses of joint replacement (mainly hip and knee), implant fixation and the simultation of outcome of orthopaedic reconstructions. He is involved in a project that aims at the development of a non-resorbable meniscus implant for patients with severe meniscal tears. He is furthermore involved in a project in which musculoskeletal models are used to better predict the functional outcome of complex orthopaedic surgery.

Fergal J. O’Brien

Fergal O’Brien is a mechanical engineer with a PhD in bone mechanobiology (TCD, 2001). He subsequently carried out postdoctoral research in orthopaedic tissue engineering at MIT before his faculty appointment in 2003. Since then he has acquired over €10 million in grant funding, has published over 100 journal articles, book chapters and editorials, filed 4 patents and supervised 12 PhD students to completion. He has an h-index of 25 (as of April 2012). He has been awarded a number of scientific honours including a Fulbright Scholarship (2001), New Investigator Recognition Award by the Orthopaedic Research Society (2002), Science Foundation Ireland, President of Ireland Young Researcher Award (€1.1. million, 2004), Engineers Ireland Chartered Engineer of the Year (2005) and in 2009, a European Research Council (ERC) Investigator Award (€2 million). He is a reviewer for over 40 scientific journals and for funding agencies throughout Europe as well as Australia, Canada and the USA. He is currently Treasurer of the Biomedical Division of Engineers Ireland, Committee Member of the Section of Bioengineering of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland, Editorial Consultant for the Journal of Biomechanics and Subject Editor (Tissue Engineering) for the Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials.

Manuela Teresa Raimondi
Manuela T. Raimondi was born in Milano in 1968. She graduated and developed her career at Politecnico di Milano. She is a mechanical engineer with a PhD in Bioengineering obtained in 2000. Since 2005, she has been an Assistant Professor of Industrial Bioengineering at the Department of Structural Engineering. She teaches the course “Biomimetics and Tissue Engineering” to graduate Biomedical Engineering students.
She is the head of the Mechanobiology Lab, located within the Laboratory of Biological Structure Mechanics (LaBS). Her research is focused on investigating how cells interact mechanically with their environment, and on the effect of such interaction on their biological response. In the context of osteo-chondral tissue engineering, she is developing synthetic stem cell niches and microfluidic bioreactors, rendered accessible to live fluorescence diagnostics, as novel research means for furthering our understanding of basic stem cell mechanobiology. She employs multiphysics computational modelling to study the effects of culture conditions on cell behaviour and tissue growth over time.
Her contribution to science include 46 ISI papers and 3 patents in the areas of orthopaedic surgery, arthroscopy and tissue engineering. She has consulted for several orthopaedic companies, Italian and foreign, for the European Commission and the American National Science Foundation.

Philipp Thurner
Dr Philipp Thurner is a Reader in Mechanobiology at the Faculty of Engineering and the Environment and the Deputy Director of the µVIS EPSRC Computer Tomography Centre at the University of Southampton. He holds an MSc degree in Physics from the Graz University of Technology and a PhD degree in Materials Science / Biomedical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich. After post-doctoral work at the University of California in Santa Barbara and San Francisco (2004-2007), he was appointed Lecturer in Mechanobiology at the University of Southampton in 2007 and Reader in 2012.
His basic research interests are focused on the correlation between ultra- and microstructure and mechanical function of bone as well as soft tissue within the airways. Motivation for this research originates from pathologies like osteoporosis and asthma, leading to alterations of tissue stiffness and/or fracture toughness, which can have severe consequences for patients. These research efforts group underpin the mid- and long-range goals of achieving better diagnosis and treatments of diseases affecting tissue quality and function. Philipp Thurner has so far published 35 articles in peer-reviewed journals and he has been a member of the ESB since 2010.

Ivanka Petkova Veneva

Senior assistant Professor – Institute of Mechanics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria. Ivanka obtained her Ph. Doctor in Biomechanics, 2009 and degree in Engineer, Electronics and Automation, Technical University Sofia, 1989. She is a member of the European Society of Biomechanics,International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics,Bulgarian Society of Biomechanics, Society of Automatics and Informatics. She was awarded the Travel award of the European Society of Biomechanics at 17th Congress of the European Society of Biomechanics (ESB2010), Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. Her Research experience is in: Biomechanics of human motion, Data acquisition devices for measurement and analysis of signals during locomotion, Assisting devices for ankle-foot complex, Rehabilitation Robotics, Control and regulation techniques, Specialized controllers design, Industrial automation, Mechatronics and Instrumentation as electronic engineer, constructor, marketing manager and quality coordinator of Quality Management System ISO9001. She has technical skills in Hardware and system software design, Control and regulation techniques in Mechatronics, Signal processing,
Programming skills in C, C++, Assemblers, low level programming for Atmel AVR microcontrollers (Microsoft Visual Studio, .NET, AVR Studio, Code Vision AVR),
Electronic circuit design and PCB layout (Altium Designer). Work experience with SimMechanics, Simulink MATLAB and Lab VIEW modelling, ProEngineer, Solid Works, AutoCAD, CorelDRAW, Corel Photoshop, Adobe Acrobat, MS Office
Work experience with Business Navigator, skills in counting software and Book-keeping;
Internal auditor of Quality Management System ISO9001.

EAMBES Update:

In February, the EAMBES held a new round of elections to select the society representatives to the General Council. The ballots closed on 28 February, 2012 and the following new members were elected to the Council: Birgit Glasmacher, Jary Hyttinen, Damien Lacroix and Michael Imhoff. The revitalised council is now complete and the ESB is well represented in this body.

http://www.eambes.org/news/2012council-elections

The EAMBES held their General Assembly on 13 March, 2012 in Brussels, with attendance by the EAMBES Council and 18 additional representatives of societies and institutions. The General Assembly continues to strongly support the lobbying activities of the EAMBES.

In its recent newsletter, the EAMBES highlights the efforts of the FDA to promote biomedical engineering and a faster market access for medical devices, a topic that is at the top of the priority list for the EAMBES’s discussions with EU policy makers. With the FDA “Innovation Pathway 2.0”, the aim is to shorten the time to develop medical products through an earlier collaboration of FDA staff with the innovators. These developments are encouraged by the US administration. In contrast, the policy and future perspective in the EU is less clear. As one of many members of the ESB who is also heavily involved in biomedical engineering activities and the development of new medical technologies, I find it encouraging that the EAMBES continues to push for support at the European level for translational research and a less restrictive path-to-market.

http://www.eambes.org/news/fda-promotes-biomedical-engineering-and-faster-market-access-for-medical-devices

Finally, the EAMBES continues to fulfil its role of monitoring and informing on the progress towards comprehensive funding within the upcoming 2012 FP7 funding programme (and beyond) for research in the domain of biomedical engineering. It is encouraging to see that there are still openings being created, however some creativity may be required for the “classical” biomechanist to fit the profile presented in the current draft of the upcoming Health Work Programme.

http://www.eambes.org/news/201cbiomedical-engineering201d-mentioned-in-draft-version-of-the-2013-fp7-health-work-programme

Stephen Ferguson

Student’s corner:

Dear students,

We look forward to welcoming you to the upcoming ESB congress in Lisbon in July. As ever, we will attempt to provide a mix of events to help you in your current and up-coming careers.

Since many of you will remain in the scientific fields in which you are currently working, the chances of meeting your fellow students at future congresses and meetings are exceedingly high. As a result, in Lisbon, we will be trying a new approach to getting to know your colleagues – and providing the chance for you to get to meet people who you might otherwise not get to meet for some years to come. Here, we will be running a “speed meeting” event, where you will have about 30 seconds to meet and exchange key credentials with your fellow students. With this, we hope that you will not only be able to avoid embarrassing future meetings where you’ve seen each other before but aren’t quite sure who it was, but also build professional relationships with others in your field. All you need to bring is yourself and a whole load of business cards. If you don’t have any, it’s time to get them sorted out!

As another new addition to the Students repertoire at the ESB, we have now implemented a LinkedIn group entitled “European Society of Biomechanics” (also to be found as a link at the new ESB website), so please feel free to join us there!

In this edition of the Students Corner, Silke Wüst (one of the Student Committee) has put together a short compilation of tips and tricks for your upcoming presentations in Lisbon:

Giving a successful presentation

In order to ensure that the quality of presentations remains as high as ever, it is important to be well prepared for your talk, and this can be aided by following a few key guidelines. As part of the Students Corner of this spring newsletter, we are pleased to provide a brief summary of the key points for ensuring a successful presentation.

1: Simple slides

Keep your slides simple. Use a simple text style and do not overload your slides. Images are always welcome in presentations; if used effectively, they provide an accessible method to demonstrate a concept in an easy and understandable manner. As such, they can ease the presentation and help avoid excessive text on the slide. To ensure a good diagram or graph make sure you include only the information you will talk about. Do not underestimate the importance of the slide’s background; a very dark colour can lead to a sleeping audience, whereas a coloured or complex background may be distracting, so a light coloured and simple template is generally considered acceptable. Many presenters additionally like animations and videos, but use them sparingly and only where they really contribute to the understanding.

2: Time

In most cases when you have to give a presentation, you are restricted to a certain pre-specified time. Exceeding this time limit is discourteous and most people will not appreciate spending their well-earned coffee break listening to you. A rough estimate is to calculate for 1 slide per minute, but a couple of practice runs of your presentation can allow more exact time-keeping – and allow you to order the important points in your head as you do it. Don’t forget to leave enough time for the discussion – if you talk too long to allow questions, you may well be left with the feeling that you are shipped off the stage as quickly as possible at the end of your presentation by the chairman.

3: Consistency

Design your slide master template before starting to prepare the presentation. This helps a lot to keep the format consistent throughout the whole presentation. Use the same text style for all slides and avoid using many different font sizes. A presentation that is not consistent appears as a series of slides thrown together from other presentations, and therefore comes over as not important.

4: Present clearly

Wait a second and establish eye contact with the audience before you start your talk. Also think about your first sentence before entering the stage. A key factor for presenting clearly is to look at the audience and talk to them, not to the screen. The better you are prepared the easier it is to loosen your eyes from your slides. Talk slowly and take some breaks during the presentation, this gives time for the audience to catch up. Do only one thing at a time, either talk or manipulate the computer. Don’t make your audience read a text while saying something different – and even better, avoid any lengthy texts completely! Try and use meaningful bullet points to guide your presentation, which will not only help you avoid reading from your slides, but will also provide you a clear flow, so that your story goes from important point to important point.

5: Take home message

The end of the talk is what people remember the most. Use this fact; summarise your main findings and give your audience a clear take home message, which is the most important thing they should remember about your talk. Don’t finish on a statement on what needs to be done in the future, or what the limitations of your study are. Make sure that your message is clear and focussed on what you have really done in your study – but most importantly of all, ensure that it is relevant to the problem in hand. The audience will appreciate you getting this right!

6 … and most important of all, remember to enjoy yourself! Nobody is going to attack you, but you do have an excellent opportunity to present yourself to colleagues and potential future employers, as well as get valuable questions and feedback to your work that can be used in a constructive manner for improving your study or scientific approach.

We look forward to seeing you all in Lisbon.

Bill Taylor and the ESB Student Committee (Silke, Alessandra, Arzu and Ali)

Membership news:

In order to avoid any confusion regarding the payment of the ESB membership fee and congress fee, we remind you of the following:

• Only ‘ESB members in good standing’ can take advantage of the reduced congress fee, i.e. (i) active or student members who have paid their membership fee for 2012 prior to registering to the congress, or (ii) honorary or senior members who are excused from paying the membership fee.
• The (reduced) congress fee of (active or student) members in good standing who register to the congress automatically includes an extension of their membership fee until the end of the next year (i.e. end of 2013 in the case of the ESB2012 congress in Lisbon). This also means that by registering to the congress, they automatically qualify for the reduced congress fee at the next ESB congress (i.e. the ESB2013 congress).
• Non-members registering to the congress can apply for ESB membership. If approved by the ESB Council, their congress fee will cover one year membership until the end of the congress year (i.e. end of 2012 in the case of the ESB2012 congress).
• ESB members who cannot attend the congress will still have the chance to renew their membership during the ‘regular’ membership campaign in the Fall of each year. During this campaign all ESB members will also have the chance to subscribe to specific journals at reduced rates (see http://esbiomech.org?page_id=55).

Please remember that the early registration deadline for the ESB2012 congress is May 30, 2012 (see http://www.esbiomech2012.org/). If you want to take advantage of the reduced congress fee, please make sure you have paid your membership fee in advance! You can pay your membership fee after logging into the ESB website (http://esbiomech.org?page_id=185). The ESB website has been redesigned recently, but you can still login with your email address (the one you used to register for the ESB) and old password. If you do not remember your password, just fill out your email address on the login page and a new password will be generated and emailed to you. If you do not remember whether you have paid your membership fee for 2012, just check your account overview on the members home page (accessible after login). We hope you enjoy the new ESB website!

A very warm welcome to the new members who have joined us since Autumn 2011. The total membership of the European Society of Biomechanics is now 844.

Welcome to the following new ESB members:

Alessia Baretta, Sara Barreto, Magdalena Bartkowiak-Jowsa, Mohammad Shariat Ullah Bhuiyan, Nicholas Bishop, Nicolas Bochud, Carlos Borau, Michele Buonsanti, Darren Burke, Aura Cardona Ochoa, Aurélie Carlier, Emanuele Luigi Carniel, Giulia Cerino, Manuel Chiachio Ruano, Juan Chiachio Ruano, Claudio Chiastra, Myriam Cilla, Viviana Correia Pinto, Susanna Crawford, Fangsen Cui, Mason Dean, Robin Delaine-Smith, Maciej Dluski, Jaime Dominguez, Elena Dordoni, Michel Ducos, Bogdan Ene-Iordache, Cristina Falcinelli, Josep M. Font-Llagunes, Thomas Franz, Diego Gallo, Noelia Garijo, Francesca Gervaso, Umut Atakan Gurkan, Mohamed Hamdy Doweidar, Istabrak Hasan, Belen Hernandez Gascon, Kirsty Hicks, David Hoey, Zdenek Horak, Wouter Huberts, Ahmed Imran, Etelvina Javierre, Angelo Karunaratne, Johan Kerkhofs, Hanifeh Khayyeri, Woong Kim, Niklas König, Luigi La Barbera, Matteo Laganà, Jasna Leder Horina, Joan Lobo Prat, Sandra Loerakker, Yongtao Lu, June Madete, Simone Andrea Manini, Pedro Martins, Sara McBride, Alessio Meoli, Senay Mihcin, Michael Moreno, Katrin Nagel, Carlos A. Narváez-Tovar, Michele Nava, Anja Niehoff, Yim-Taek Oh, Andy Luis Olivares Miyares, Chen Yen Ooi, Anna Pandolfi, Kati Pasanen, Salvatore Pasta, Lorenza Petrini, Silvia Pianigiani, Lev Podshivalov, Hendi Handian Rachmat, Federico Riva, Alessandro Ruggiero, Mohsen Shaeri, Babak Sharifimajd, Grazia Spatafora, Matthew Szarko, Michael Takaza, Russell Tucker, Clara Valero, William van Grunsven, Vonne van Heeswijk, An Van Schepdael, Claudio Vergari, Guillermo Vilalta, Anne Vrancken, Paul Watton, Alexander White

Society news:

A Tribute to Christian Oddou:

The European Society of Biomechanics is very sad to announce the death of our esteemed colleaque Christian Oddou, here are a few words about Chrisitan’s career and achievements from Dominque Barthes:

Christian Oddou was Professor of Mechanics at the University Paris 12 at Créteil where he created and a research laboratory on Biomechanics (Laboratory of Mechanics & Physics) which he directed for many years. He also served as Dean of the School of Science of Paris 12 University. A great believer in international cooperation, he was one of the founding members of the World Council for Biomechanics. His field of research dealt with the biomechanics of the cardiovascular and musculoskeletal systems with applications to clinical investigations and to the conception of artificial organs. With his collaborators, he designed new analytical and numerical methods coupled to specific experiments in order to characterize the mechanical properties of biological systems and tissues. He has thus proposed original methods to evaluate and reproduce the behavior of soft biological materials, which necessitate a multiscale analysis. His tensegrity model of the cell is one example of this approach. Recently his research interest were turned towards the micromechanics of cells with applications to tissue engineering, bone remodeling, skin reconstruction and repair, design of artificial connective tissue for orthopedics. His research was at the cross road between multiscale physics and mechanics and orthopedic surgery.
Christian had an immense scientific culture that he shared willingly with his colleagues and students. He always had the good question at a thesis defense, congress presentation or council meeting. We will remember him as the kind, enthusiastic and merry colleague that he was.

Special Book Offer exclusive to Newsletter Readers:

We are pleased to have secured this special offer for our readers from Princeton University Press – Solid Biomechanics by Roland Ennos, University of Manchester. To obtain the book at a 25% discount please quote Voucher code P-ENN25, Valid until 1st Sept 2012.
Order via Princeton University Press’ UK distributors John Wiley & Sons Ltd on +44 1243 843291.

“The publication of this book is nothing if not auspicious. In Solid Biomechanics, Ennos brings to bear his unusually wide experience, from early work on insect flight to extensive recent research on plants. This is a book that we very much need.”–Steven Vogel, professor emeritus, Duke University