The growth of trees, and the resulting wood microstructure, is substantially influenced by the mechanical loading to which the respective tree structure is subjected. The Austrian Science Fund (FWF – Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung) funds, within the scope of the 1000 ideas programme, a two-year project aiming at the development of computational tools which allow for predicting how and to which extent trees grow under certain mechanical boundary conditions. While so far the field of plant mechanobiology has been mainly driven forward through experimental studies, this project bears the potential of launching a completely new (sub-)field, namely computational plant mechanobiology, by reconciling the theoretical concepts of classical beam mechanics, multiscale wood mechanics, and multiscale systems biology.
More information can be found here: https://www.imws.tuwien.ac.at/fileadmin/mediapool-werkstoffe/Bilder/Forschung/Stellenausschreibung_aktuell.pdf
