Huiskes Medal for Biomechanics 2019
The ESB is pleased to announce that Professor Ralph Müller has been awarded the Huiskes Medal for Biomechanics 2019.
Dr. Müller is Professor of Biomechanics at ETH Zürich, Switzerland. He studied electrical engineering at ETH Zürich, where he also received his doctoral degree in 1994. In 1996, he moved to Boston where he served as a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at Harvard Medical School and the Associate Director of the Orthopedic Biomechanics Laboratory. Between 2000 and 2011, he was first an SNF Professor of Bioengineering then Associate and Full Professor at ETH Zürich, where he also served as Head of the Department of Health Sciences and Technology. Prof. Müller has become internationally renowned for pioneering the use of desktop micro-computed tomography, and quantitative imaging to hierarchically assess skeletal structure-function relationships in mechanobiology and regenerative medicine. He was the first to measure and analyze 3D bone microstructures in patients in vivo, yielding important information not only on bone structures but also on how they age in humans and the functional consequences of these changes. Not only are his approaches now used for precise phenotypic characterization of tissue response in mammalian genetics and mechanobiology, as well as tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, but the results of his research have led to a new and radical insight into the function, strength and temporal adaptation of bone tissues. These findings have been ground breaking for understanding the role of age and degenerative diseases such as osteoporosis on mechanical failure of bone, which remains critical in the modern western world. His success is documented in Prof. Müller’s prolific work in this area, with 318 refereed original journal and 226 proceeding articles, 78 chapters and reviews, 2 books, and 624 peer- reviewed abstracts. His work impact places him in the top 1% of the ISI Essential Science Indcators in the three fields of Engineering, Biology & Biochemistry and Materials Science.
