Dear Subscriber,
We are pleased to present the Autumn 2021 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.
Enjoy your reading.
Michele Conti, Chair of the Publication Committee
From the President
With the semester in full swing our annual Congress seems long gone. But thinking about it brings back positive feelings 😉. ESB 2021 was going to be a unique event; obviously, because this was the first time we held our conference online.
Online conferences were unexplored territory for us, hence, the Milan team had to develop it from scratch. The Milan team, with captain Francesco Migliavacca, put in much energy and many hours of planning, and what came out was a program that worked very well! Honestly, for me the biggest positive surprise of ESB 2021 was that within the limitations of a virtual event the Milan team managed to make us feel connected. I was not quite sure what to expect from recorded presentations followed by interactive discussions. But it worked out very well: many sessions saw lively discussions allowing to discuss our scientific core business. Furthermore, the conference was run with great precision and all the IT worked the way it had been planned.
ESB 2021 also served a need, demonstrated by an excellent attendance with over 800 participants. Hence, a big round of applause to Francesco Migliavacca and his team for creating this unique event! And thank you all for your participation and for the trust you’ve given to the Milan team and to the ESB at large. The large number of participants, and above all the lively discussions during ESB 2021 assure me that the society is alive and kicking!
Best regards,
take good care of yourself, and of each other.
Harry van Lenthe, ESB President
Meeting News
Call of bids for hosting ESBiomech2025. The ESB invites proposals for the organization of its annual congress in 2025. If you would like to host and organize the 2025 ESB congress and wish to prepare and submit a bid, please read the conference rules:
https://esbiomech.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Bid_rules_2019.pdf
Interested members can contact or send a proposal/bid to Dr Enrico Dall’Ara, Chair of the Meetings and External Affairs Committee (e.dallara@sheffield.ac.uk),
The deadline for bid submission (first step) to organize the ESB 2025 is 15 December 2021.
The 27th ESB Congress (ESBiomech2022) will take place between 26 – 29 June 2022 in Porto, Portugal!
The submission for perspective talks is now open and the deadline is 30th November 2021. The call for abstracts will open in December 2021 and close on 31st January 2022. Stay tuned and check the ESBiomech2022 website for more details about the congress tracks and topics: www.esbiomech2022.org.
Read more here about coming initiatives.
Awards Committee
Call for applications for Prizes and Honours in relation to the ESB 2022 Congress. We have the pleasure to foster outstanding biomechanics research through numerous awards. Please be aware that the application deadlines for the upcoming congress in Porto are approaching now. In 2022, the 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 coincides with the abstract submission deadline for the ESB Congress (31 January 2022). For all awards based on a conference abstract, please ensure to check the submission box during abstract submission and submit all of the additional documents that may be required.
I look forward to receiving your high-quality submissions to the awards over the coming months, as well as to seeing you all in Porto in June 2022.
SM Perren Award – Application deadline 31st January 2022. Please consider submitting your latest work as an original article choosing the SM Perren Award to Journal of Biomechanics latest by January 31st, 2022. For more information, please see the Perren award webpage.
Best Doctoral Thesis Award – Application deadline 31st January 2022. Applications are submitted via email to the award chair. For more information, please see the Best Doctoral Thesis award webpage. All of the Awards listed below are based on abstract submission to the ESB2022 congress, 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 31st January 2022. 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 31st January 2022. Four finalists will be selected to present and compete for the Award in a dedicated session during the yearly ESB Congress in Porto. Please ensure to 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 31st January 2022. 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 a Poster Award Committee. For more information, please see the Poster award page.
ESB Travel Awards – Application deadline 31st January 2022. A substantial number of Travel Awards (minimum of 20) 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.
Markus Heller, Vice President of the ESB and Chair of the Awards Committee
ESB Education and Student Committee
ESB Webinar series
On 22 September 2021, we hosted an ESB webinar on Python. The webinar, attended by more than 75 participants, showcased some of the core capabilities of Python for your daily scientific programming work including:
- Numerical and scientific computing with Numpy/Scipy
- Plotting with Matplotlib
- Image processing with scikit-image
- Pandas data structures.
The recordings of all webinars can be seen by subscribing to the ESB You Tube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/ESBiomech
Mark in your calendar!
The next joined ESB-VPH webinar will be on December 1st, 2021 at 17h00 CET. The webinar will focus on the use of Synopsys Simpleware software in creating image based models for orthopaedic applications and in particular on:
- Introducing Simpleware Software
- Reviewing the image to model workflow focusing on the segmentation of images to create 3D models
- Covering some of the application areas for these models once created.
The webinar will be conducted by Dr. Thomas Spirka, a Senior Application Engineer for Simpleware Software at Synopsys.
More information and registration can be done here: https://esbiomech.org/student-section/esb-webinars/
New ESB student committee members. We would very much like to welcome the following members to the ESB student committee: Alexandra Tits, Filippo Bertozzi, Laura Lafuente, Gracia Ingmar Fleps, Gianluca Santesarti, Andrada Pica, Chiara Dazzi.
Read here more about this and other news regarding activities of the ESB students.
Scientific Communication News
Call for expressions of interest to contribute as presenter to the online ESB journal club – March 2022. As announced at the ESB2021 conference, we will organize an online journal club in which ESB student members can present their accepted work. This event is tentatively schedueled in March 2022 (dates to be confirmed).
Was your paper accepted in 2021 in a peer reviewed journal? Would you like to present it online and answer questions from the audience in a ‘meet the author’ session? Participate!
Before December 1st 2021, express your interest by email to ilse.jonkers@kuleuven.be
- stating the full reference to the paper
- attaching the accepted manuscript
- presenting proof of acceptance by the journal
- presenting agreement signed by the senior author for participation in the online journal club.
A selection committee will critically revise the contributions and select the top 5 papers for presentation. Selected authors will be notified on January 20th, 2022. Selected authors will be invited to contribute a video (mp4) presenting a short pitch of the paper (3-5 min) that will be shared on the ESB Youtube channel. Authors will be given the opportunity to present their work during the online journal club and discuss it with the online audience (dates to be confirmed). The ‘Meet the author sessions’ will be recorded and made available online through the ESB Youtube channel.
Open call for PhD science communication videos. To enhance science communication, ESB would like to leverage making available video pitch presentation (3 mins) of defended PhDs. In these videos, the candidate is given the opportunity to communicate the thesis work to the broader public, to present his/her work in layman’s terms and to focus on the impact of the work to society.
Interested to share your PhD work with the ESB community? – Participate! Send your video (in mp4) by email to ilse.jonkers@kuleuven.be, together with the proof of PhD acceptance and agreement by your supervisor. After screening of the video content, the pitch will be made available on the ESB Youtube channel.
Special issue by European Society of BIomechanics and the Royal Society Interface Focus special issue – Biological Anthroengineering. The Royal Society Publishing has recently published a special issue of Interface Focus entitled Biological Anthroengineering organized by Michael A Berthaume, Paul J Constantino and Patricia A Kramer. The articles can be accessed directly at https://royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rsfs/2021/11/5
There is also a blog post at https://royalsociety.org/blog/2021/08/biological-anthroengineering
Ilse Jonkers, Chair of the Scientific Communications Committee
Diversity-Inclusion and Membership News
Biomechanics Teaching Tool. BoB Biomechanics, the developers of the BoB musculoskeletal analysis package, has announced the release of BoB/Teaching; a tool specifically designed for teaching biomechanics at undergraduate and Masters level. BoB/Teaching is a package which has all of the analysis and graphics capabilities of BoB together with many examples illustrating a broad range of biomechanical principles. For further information see: BoB-Biomechanics.com/BoB-4-biomechanics
Mark Thompson, Chair of the Diversity-Inclusion and Membership Committee
Treasurer’s News
After a last update of the ESB 2021 financial balance, I am glad to announce that the ESB is still in a good shape, and will be able to start 2022 in good financial health. This result is a very good news, after the 2020-2021 COVID perturbations, also taking into account that the Society has been able to respect its 2021 road map regarding the major awards, with 12 ESB awards (1 Best PhD Thesis in Biomechanics Award; 1 Mobility Award; 2 Best Student Awards; 2 Best Student Runner Up Awards; 6 Best Poster Awards) in the form of prize-moneys. Beyond the work of the Council, this has been possible thanks to the incredible commitment of our members, to our sponsors, and to the fantastic work of our colleagues from Milano who turned the 2021 Online ESB Congress into a successful gathering, backed up by marvellous science and social spirit. Thank you all!
Jérôme Noailly, ESB Treasurer
ESB National Chapters & External Affairs News
edited by Enrico Dall’Ara, Chair of the Meetings and External Affairs Committee, and Mark Thompson, Chair of Diversity-Inclusion and Membership Committee
News from the ESB National Chapters
Italian ESB Chapter
In the past 6 months, the ESB-ITA chapter has taken the following initiatives:
1) During the ESB2021 Congress, the ESB-ITA chapter awarded Sara Maria Giannitelli from Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma with the ESB-ITA Poster Award for her poster “3D Bioprinting of a photocurable and thermosensitive bioink for skin tissue engineering”.
2) The ESB-ITA Chapter organized the X Annual Meeting Italian Chapter European Society of Biomechanics “ESB-ITA live on-air 2021” – 23-24 September 2021. The meeting consisted of 12 invited presentations (abstracts available on the ESB-ITA website) and 3 keynote lectures on national and international projects in biomechanics. During the meeting, Giulia Cavazzoni was awarded with the ESB-ITA Master Thesis Award 2021 with her thesis “In vitro characterization of the three-dimensional strain pattern in human vertebrae affected by metastases”. The total number of submitted Master Theses was 23.
3) The new ExBo of ESB-ITA was elected during the ESB-ITA live on-air 2021:
Diana Massai (President), Politecnico di Torino
Simona Celi, Fondazione Toscana G. Monasterio, Massa/Pisa
Alessio Gizzi, University of Rome Campus Bio-Medico
4) In December, the ESB-ITA will publish the annual newsletter with the description of prizes and recognitions to Italian students and researchers obtained at the last international meetings. For the newsletter, a pool will be conducted, by categorising publications of ESB-ITA members in terms of thematics or of academic role and age of first author.
Dr Diana Massai, on behalf of the Italian chapter of the ESB
Spanish ESB Chapter
On October 25 and 26, the 10th Meeting of the Spanish Chapter of the ESB was held in Granada, delayed one year due to the pandemic.
The congress, hosted by Guillermo Rus, from the Ultrasonics Lab at the University of Granada, was very well received: more than 80 participants and 70 presentations showed that the Spanish chapter is more alive than ever.
The congress also featured keynotes from Prof. Ralph Sinkus, Chair in Biomedical Engineering from the Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine at King’s College (London), and from Prof. Héctor Gómez, from the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University (US).
Those registered for the congress also had the opportunity to attend the course “Elastography: from the theory of mechanical waves in soft tissues to the patient”.
Two works were additionally selected for the Best Scientific Contribution Award:
- Maria Segarra-Queralt: “A computational approach to chondrocyte mechanotransduction”
Raquel Megías: “Estudio del comportamiento mecánico de una muestra bioinspirada de hueso trabecular obtenida mediante impresión 3D en ácido poliláctico.” (Study of the mechanical behaviour of a trabecular bone bio-inspired material, manufactured through 3D printing with polylactic acid) - During the congress, the Chapter Assembly took place, where the mandate of the current ExBo was renewed. Researchers Alejandro Yánez (Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria), Rosa Pàmies Vilà (Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña) and Francisco Romero Sánchez (Universidad de Extremadura) are commissioned to encourage, foster, promote and develop in Spain the main objectives of the European Society of Biomechanics for the next 2 years.
Dr Alejandro Yánez, on behalf of the Spanish chapter of the ESB
News from the other Institutions and scientific associations
Virtual Physiological Human institute (VPHi)
Three news related to VPHi:
- VPHi and EMA’s white paper: guidelines for the inclusion of digital evidence in regulatory filings in the pharma domain https://www.vph-institute.org/news/ema-s-white-paper-guidelines-for-the-inclusion-of-digital-evidence-in-regulatory-filings-in-the-phar.html
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VPH 6th Summer School: 23rd – 27th May 2022 in Barcelona. The thematic will be “Models & Simulations for highly multifactorial disorders”. https://www.vph-institute.org/events/6th-vph-summer-school.html
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VPHi 2022 conference: Virtual bodies for treatment development and clinical trials. 6th – 9th September 2022 in Porto https://vph-conference.org/
VPHi Institute
International Society of Biofabrication (ISBF)
News from ISBF:
(1) Perspective talk by Miguel at 26th Congress of the European Society of Biomechanics (ESB), Online. Topic “BIOFABRICATION OF MECHANICAL FUNCTIONAL LIVING TISSUES: AT THE CROSSROAD OF TWO RESEARCH SOCIETIES”
(2) Symposium at 6th World Congress TERMIS. Topic “Biomechanics of 3D (Bio) printed materials”. Session chairs Miguel Castilho and Jérôme Noailly
Miguel Dias Castilho, on behalf of the ISBF
Australian and New Zealand Society of Biomechanics (ANZORS)
News from ANZORS:
1: Australasian Biomechanics Conference (ABC) 12 will be taking place in an online version from 6-7 December 2021. This is the biennial conference of the Australian New Zealand Society of Biomechanics (ANZSB). More information on the conference and registration can be found on: https://abc12.dryfta.com/index.php
2: Launch of the ARC Trainings Centre for Joint Biomechanics will be the 12th November 2021, at Queensland University of Technology. More information about the trainings centre can be found on: https://jointbiomechanics.org/
Peter Pivonka, on behalf of the ANZORS
Portuguese Society of Biomechanics
The Portuguese Society of Biomechanics organized a (mask) face-to-face event (mini workshop) on July 9th at the Hotel Boutique Serra da Lousã, Portugal.
The thematic of the workshop was “Biomechanics: future perspectives”. Mark Taylor, Flinders University, Australia, José Simões (ESAD-College of Art and Design ), João Paulo Vilas Boas (University of Porto), and the coordinator of the biomechanics section of the Portuguese Society of Orthopedics and Traumatology, Daniel Mendes, were the invited speakers. The objective of the event was to stimulate and promote the discussion about new research subjects and perspectives for the future.
This event also served as a milestone for the approval of the society’s new statutes.
In the following day a pedestal walkway through the Lousã mountain was organized by the participants, promoting iteration outside the work environment and sharing moments of leisure.
Antonio Ramos, on behalf of the Portuguese Society of Biomechanics
Polish Society of Biomechanics
In two days of September (9th and 10th) took place the International Conference of Polish Society of Biomechanics BIOMECHANICS 2020. This conference was moved from September 2020, but due to still present coronavirus restrictions went on-line. The on-line format enabled us invitation of 10 speakers from around the world, covering with their topic different fields of biomechanics. During these two days we had 35 oral presentations and 34 posters prepared by 223 authors. There were 115 on-line participants from 14 countries. Selected full papers were published by Springer Biomechanics in Medicine, Sport and Biology, ISBN 978-3-030-86296-1. Till November26th interested persons can register at reduced fee and have access to the conference till 26th of November: https://biomechanics2020.wum.edu.pl/.
Małgorzata Syczewska, on behalf of the PSB
Hellenic Society of Biomechanics
News of the Hellenic Society of Biomechanics:
- We’ve established a new award. The HSB Thesis Award is geared towards graduate and undergraduate students and intended to intensify their active participation in the community. It will be presented to the winner, during our (upcoming) 9th Conference
- We’ve also started a collaboration with Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology (Biomechanics section), to support our conference and increase its visibility.
Concerning our biannual conference, this was postponed to 2022 and the corresponding web-link and information will be announced soon. The following 2 plenary speakers have already agreed to attend: Prof. Walter Herzog, Faculty of Kinesiology at University of Calgary and Prof. Gerhard A. Holzapfel, Head of the Institute of Biomechanics at Graz University of Technology
Alexander Tsouknidas, on behalf of the Hellenic Society of Biomechanics
