Summer School on "Biomechanics, from Protein to Tissue to Organ: Modeling and Computation"

Summer School on "Biomechanics, from Protein to Tissue to Organ: Modeling and Computation" in Graz, Austria

A one-week Summer School on Biomechanics will take place in Graz, Austria, in September 3-7, 2018. The lectures will cover constitutive modeling of soft tissues such as arteries in health and disease, including aortic dissections, abdominal aortic aneurysms and different approaches to modeling the microstructure. Models of heart, brain and adipose tissues will be examined in comparison with experimental data. We will also include aspects of the mechanics of skin and wound healing, the cytoskeleton and biomolecules. Mechanical signaling and the mechanochemical basis of morphogenesis will also be discussed. Measurements conducted by widely used methods of cell mechanics, including atomic force microscopy and particle-tracking microrheology, will be presented, analyzed, and critically compared. Basic concepts of molecular mechanics and polymer physics relevant to the microrheology response of cells will be featured. A particular focus will also be placed on the presentation of nonlinear continuum mechanics and the finite element method, with applications in biomedical engineering.

The Summer School is addressed to PhD students and postdoctoral researchers in biomedical engineering, biophysics, mechanical and civil engineering, applied mathematics and mechanics, materials science and physiology and more senior scientists and engineers (including some from relevant industries) whose interests are in the area of biomechanics and mechanobiology of proteins, soft tissues and organs.

Invited Lecturers are:

• Amit Gefen (Tel Aviv University, Israel): Mechanobiology and models for wounds and wound healing; mechanics of adipocytes, adipose tissue and mechanobiology of obesity; mechanical modeling of cells; skin-related cell-level modeling; injury biomechanics; biomechanical aetiology of pressure ulcers; human body protection; clinical biomechanics

• Jeffrey W. Holmes (University of Virginia): Heart function; myocardial infarction; myocardial material properties; biaxial mechanical testing; anisotropy; compartmental models; agent-based models; finite-element models; growth and remodeling • Gerhard A. Holzapfel (Graz University of Technology): Introduction to soft tissue biomechanics; arterial wall mechanics; aortic dissection; abdominal aortic aneurysm; second-harmonic generation imaging; modeling of non-symmetric fiber dispersion; discrete fiber dispersion model; failure criteria for arteries; arterial fracture

• Ellen Kuhl (Stanford University, USA): Brain tissue; neurodevelopment/degeneration; neuro- mechanics; neurosurgery; axonal growth; diffuse axonal injury; traumatic brain injury; chronic traumatic ence-phalopathy; craniosynostosis; nanoindentation; elastography; personalized simulations

• Ray W. Ogden (University of Glasgow, UK): Essential ingredients of continuum mechanics, with an emphasis on nonlinear elasticity; constitutive modeling of fiber-reinforced materials and fiber dispersion; residual stresses and their influence on material response, with particular reference to arteries

• Denis Wirt (Johns Hopkins University and John Hopkins School of Medicine, USA): Cell mechanics, molecular mechanics, polymer physics, nanorheology, measurement methods for cell properties, atomic force microscopy, particle-tracking microrheology, cancer cells, cell cortex, nucleus, cytoplasm

For more details please see the website: http://www.summerschool.tugraz.at/