The meeting, which was held in conjunction with the World Congress of Biomechanics in Munich, drew a large crowd and with that a record in Award applications, especially in the Student and Poster category. The quality of the applications in that category was exceptionally high which made it hard for the Award Committee to define the winners.

On another note, please mark your calendars already now: the deadline for the submission of papers in competition of the 2008 S.M. Perren Award will be December 1, 2007. The S.M. Perren Award is the most prestigious Award of the Society and comes with a prize of 10’000 Swiss Francs sponsored by the AO Foundation. All the 2008 awards will be announced at the Biennial Meeting which will be held in beautiful Lucerne, Switzerland and hosted by the University of Bern.

Congratulations to all the winners!!!

For the Awards Committee:
Prof. Ralph Müller, Chairman
ESB Vice President

S.M. Perren Research Award
Rommel G. Bacabac, Mizuno, D., Vatsa, A., Schmidt, C., MacKintosh, F.,Van Loon, J.J.W.A., Klein-Nulend, J., Smit, T.H.(Amsterdam, The Netherlands) “Round versus flat: Bone cell morphology, elasticity and mechanosensing”

Laudatio: “The Award winning paper by Bacabac and coworkers present a precisely written summary of a well-designed study aimed at improving our understanding of the effects of cell morphology and elasticity on mechanosensing. The techniques described and developed by the authors and the resulting data provide a clear path forward for researchers interested in better understanding the physiological and pathological effects of cell adherence on cell structure and function set in the rapidly expanding field of cell mechanobiology. With the growing recognition by researcher in diverse disciplines that cell adherence has an important role in cell and tissue function, the work by Bacabac and coworkers provides a seminal investigation of the effects of cell morphology and elasticity on mechanosensing clearly worthy of the S.M. Perren Award, the most prestigious award of the European Society of Biomechanics.”

ESB Clinical Biomechanics Award
Ewen Northwood, Fisher, J. (Leeds, UK) "In vitro investigation into the effects of uni and multi-directional motion on the friction, damage and wear of innovative chondroplasty materials against articular cartilage"

ESB Student Award
Liesbet Geris, Vander Sloten, J., Van Oosterwyck, H. (Leuven, Belgium) "Mathematical modeling of bone regeneration including the angiogenic process"

ESB Poster Award
Margherita Cioffia, Küffer, J., Ströbel, S., Dubinia, G., Martin, I., Wendt, D. (Milano, Italy) “CFD model of mass transport with the microarchitecture of engineered cartilage during perfusion culture”

ESB Travel Awards
Antje Luchs, Martin-Luther-Universität, Halle, Germany
Andrzej Przybyla, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
Merab Svanadze, Tbilisi State University, Tbilisi, Georgia