ESB 2010 Council Elections

General Assembly – European Society of Biomechanics - Edinburgh, July 7, 2010

New elections for council members are taking place at the General Assembly of the European Society of Biomechanics during the 17th Congress of the European Society of Biomechanics on July 7, 2010 at 17:00. All active members in good standing are eligible to vote in a secret ballot.

Four seats are available on the council of the European Society of Biomechanics due to the fact that terms are ending for a number of council members. Ralph Müller and Marco Viceconti have finished their two 4-year terms and must step down; Hans van Oosterwyck and Peter Zioupos have finished their first 4-year term.

Eight candidates have sent their candidatures as indicated below.

Two acting council members were standing for re-election:
- Dr. Hans Van Oosterwyck
- Dr. Peter Zioupos

The other six candidates were:
- Dr. Stephen Ferguson
- Dr. Paulo Fernandes
- Dr. Amit Gefen
- Dr. Anita Ignatius
- Dr. Jess Snedeker
- Dr. Alon Wolf

Below please find a short biography for each candidate in alphabetical order.

Dr. Stephen Ferguson  

University of Bern
Institute for Surgical Technology and Biomechanics
Switzerland

Stephen Ferguson received his degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Toronto (Canada) in 1991 and was initially active as a consulting engineer in the iron and steelmaking industry. He realigned his perspectives on the use of metal during his studies towards a Masters degree from Queen’s University (Canada) in 1994, with a focus on metallic and non-metallic implants for fracture fixation. His doctoral research on soft tissue mechanics and hip joint tribology was completed as a collaborative project between Queen’s University and the AO Research Institute in Davos. Following his PhD degree in 2000, he moved to the University of Bern where he leads the Biomechanics Division of the Institute for Surgical Technology and Biomechanics and is Co-Director of the ARTORG Spine Research Center. The focus of his group’s research is to improve our understanding of the causes of spinal disorders and to develop new treatment methods by combining knowledge from biomechanics and mechanobiology. Dr. Ferguson is the author of over 65 scientific papers, 3 book chapters and 3 patent applications. He lectures on tissue biomechanics, spinal health and medical device design. He has been a member of the ESB since 2001 and co-chaired the 2008 meeting in Lucerne.
Full CV with publications

 

Dr. Paulo Fernandes 

Department of Mechanical Engineering
Instituto Superior Técnico
Technical University of Lisbon
Portugal

Paulo Fernandes is Assistant Professor at Mechanical Eng. Department of Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Technical University of Lisbon, where he received his PhD degree in 1998. 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. He has been supervising/co-supervising 16 Masters and 7 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 27 publications in international and national journal and book chapters, and more than 80 communications in international conferences. He is also involved in the organisation of international symposia and he maintains international collaborations with research groups from Europe, Brazil and USA. He is member of the executive council of the Portuguese Society of Biomechanics since 2007.
Full CV with publications

Dr. Amit Gefen

Department of Biomedical Engineering
Tel Aviv University
Israel

I was born in Ramat-Gan, Israel, on 1971. I received the B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering and M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Tel Aviv University (TAU) in 1994, 1997, and 2001, respectively. During 2002-2003 I was a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. I am currently an Associate Professor with the Dept. of Biomedical Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of TAU. My 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. On 2007-2008 I was a visiting scientist in Eindhoven University of Technology, where I developed tissue-engineered model systems to study pressure ulcers. To date, I have published over than 80 articles in peer-reviewed international journals and edited two books. I am currently editing a book series on Mechanobiology, Tissue Engineering and Biomaterials published by Springer, and serving at Editorial Boards of several journals, including the Journal of Biomechanics, Clinical Biomechanics, Medical Engineering & Physics and Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering. For more information on the research conducted in my laboratory and for an up-to-date list of publications, please see the lab web-site at: http://www.eng.tau.ac.il/~msbm.
Full CV with publications

 

Dr. Anita Ignatius

Institute of Orthopaedic Research and Biomechanics
Ulm University
Germany

Anita Ignatius holds a PhD in Veterinary Medicine (1990). She started her research carrier at the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Munich, Germany, as a research assistant. In 1993 she changed to the Institute of Orthopaedic Research and Biomechanics at the University of Ulm, Germany (Director: Prof. Dr. Lutz Claes). For many years she headed the Biomaterials & Tissue Engineering Research Group as well as the Cell Biology Group in this institute. In 2002 she gained an Assistant Professorship for Experimental Surgery and Biomechanics at Ulm University. Her main research interests are mechanobiology in cells and bone, cell and tissue interactions with biomaterials, tissue engineering of bone, ligaments and intervertebral discs, and fracture healing. Anita Ignatius coordinated several local and national research networks in the field of biomaterials research. She is currently involved in several EU funded projects especially in the field of tissue engineering. Anita Ignatius published over 70 papers in peer-reviewed journals. She is a member of the ESB since 2005 and a founding member of the German Society of Biomechanics since 1998. Recently (2009) Anita Ignatius became Director and Chair of the Institute of Orthopaedic Research and Biomechanics, Ulm University.
Full CV with publications

Dr. Jess Snedeker

Department of Mechanical Engineering
Institute for Biomechanics
ETH Zürich
Switzerland

Jess Snedeker has served as Assistant Professor of Orthopedic Biomechanics at the University of Zurich (Uniklinik Balgrist, Laboratory for Orthopedic Research) since September 2006, and at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich (Department of Mechanical Engineering, Institute for Biomechanics) since August 2008. Dr. Snedeker received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Lehigh University in 1995. After several years in industrial research and development in fluid dynamics of air filtration, Dr. Snedeker returned to academia to earn his M.S. in Bioengineering from Penn State University in 2000, and his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the ETH Zurich in 2004. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship within the European Union Integrated Project: “GENOSTEM: Adult mesenchymal stem cell therapies for connective tissue disorders”. Since the founding of the Snedeker laboratory its members have received various awards, with 24 peer reviewed original publications accepted or in print and over 50 peer reviewed conference proceedings. Dr. Snedeker currently serves on the editorial board of the journal Biomedical Engineering, and as ad hoc reviewer for the Journal of Biomechanics and Tissue Engineering, among others. He has been married to his wife Carly since 2000, with a daughter Mea aged four.
Full CV with publications

Dr. Hans Van Oosterwyck

K.U.Leuven
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Division of Biomechanics
Belgium

Hans Van Oosterwyck holds an MSc in Materials Engineering (1995) and a PhD in Engineering Science (2000), both obtained at K.U.Leuven (Belgium). He was awarded a Young Investigator Award from the IADR (International Association of Dental Research) Implantology Research Group (1999) for his work on oral implant biomechanics. He has been a RAETIA postdoctoral fellow at the AO Research Institute (Davos, Switzerland) in 2004. In 2005 he was appointed an associate professorship at the Division of Biomechanics at K.U.Leuven. He has been a visiting scientist at the University of Zaragoza (Spain) in 2009. Since 2010 he is also a visiting professor at Ghent University (Belgium) in the field of tissue engineering. He is a member of the management board of the Prometheus Division of Skeletal Tissue Engineering at K.U.Leuven, is (co-)author of 49 ISI indexed papers and has an h-index of 11. His research focus is on mechanobiology and computational modeling of bone regeneration and engineering. Since 2006 he has been elected as Council member of the European Society of Biomechanics, of which he has been an Executive Board member since 2007. He lectures in courses on engineering mechanics, biomechanics, mechanobiology and tissue engineering within the Masters Programs on Biomedical Engineering at K.U.Leuven and Ghent University.
Full CV with publications

 

Dr. Alon Wolf

Biorobotics and Biomechanics Lab
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering
Technion Israel Institute of Technology
Israel

Dr. Wolf earned all his academic degrees from the faculty of mechanical engineering at the Technion I.I.T. He received his B.Sc in 1995 (Cum Laude), following with an M.Sc in 1998 and a Ph.D in 2002. Dr. Wolf was awarded with scholarships and awards for high academic achievements and teaching excellencies. Immediately after receiving his Ph.D, Dr. Wolf joined the Mechanical Engineering Department at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (USA) as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate. A year later, he joined the Robotics Institute of CMU (co-heads the Biomedical Robotics Lab) and the Institute for Computer Assisted Orthopaedic Surgery at the Western Pennsylvania Hospital as a research faculty. Dr. Wolf was also an adjunct Assistant Professor in the School of Medicine, Department of Surgery of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Dr. Wolf’s researches were awarded with N.S.F and N.I.H grants. In March of 2006 Dr. Wolf joined the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Technion, where he founded the Biorobotics and Biomechanics Lab (BRML). The scope of work done in the BRML provides the framework for fundamental theories in kinematics biomechanics and mechanism design, with applications in gait analysis, skin deformation modeling, medical robotics, rehabilitation robotics, and Biorobotics (Bioinspired robots) such as snake robots, or elephant trunk-like robots used for example for minimally invasive surgery.
Full CV with publications


Dr. Peter Zioupos

Biomechanics Laboratories
Cranfield University
United Kingdom

Peter Zioupos is currently a Reader in 'Biomechanics of Materials' in the Shrivenham campus of Cranfield University in Oxfordshire, UK. He holds a Bachelors degree in Physics from the University Ioannina, Greece; a PhD in Bioengineering from the Bioengineering Unit of Strathclyde University in Glasgow, UK; and was awarded a higher Doctorate (DSc) from the Senate of Strathclyde University in Nov 2008 on 'Composite aspects of basic bone biomechanics: structure/function relationships and applications'. His research interests are the fields of: biomechanics/structural & material properties of ageing human bone; microcracking and the development of damage in hard tissues; tissue biomechanics in health, disease and other pathophysiological conditions; characterisation of the elastic, toughness and rheological properties of natural tissues, composites and biomaterials for biomedical, diagnostic, or restorative applications; properties of implanted or pre-treated biomaterials; failure of biological materials and study of the in-vivo mechanisms which may prevent it; natural design patterns leading to new, light weight, durable, resilient man-made materials through biomimetic approaches; anisotropy and modelling of soft tissue mechanics and the tissue mechanics of bioprosthetic heart valves. He is also interested in forensic evidence, impact and trauma biomechanics and he is the Academic Theme Leader of the Cranfield ‘Forensic Engineering & Science’ MSc degree. He sits in the editorial panel of the Journal of Biomechanics, J Bionic Engineering, and the Journal Mechanical Behaviour of Biomedical Materials. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine (IPEM), a Chartered Scientist (CSci), and a member of the EPSRC peer review college (UK).
Full CV with publications