biomechanics

A postdoctoral researcher position is open in my group to work on multi-scale and inverse models for soft tissues and heart valve mechanics. The aim of this research will be to develop models that predict aortic stenosis - the most common valve-related disease that affects 5% of the elderly. The project is funded through the research council of UK, and will provide opportunities of working closely with clinicians and experimental collaborators.

Candidate is required to have:

During early development, the tubular embryonic chick brain undergoes a combination of progressive ventral bending and rightward torsion, one of the earliest organ-level left–right asymmetry events in development. Existing evidence suggests that bending is caused by differential growth, but the mechanism for the predominantly rightward torsion of the embryonic brain tube remains poorly understood.

One postdoctoral fellow position in solid mechanics/biomechanics at Dartmouth is immediately available in the Chen group at Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth (http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/people/faculty/zi-chen/). The subjects of research include, but are not limited to, cancer cell migration and mechanics of morphogenesis in embryos or plants.

In this study, the intrinsic viscoelastic mechanical behavior of a hierarchical bio-composite, structural bamboo material, was experimentally investigated and correlated with its microstructural constituents and molecular building blocks. The macroscopic viscoelastic responses of bulk bamboo at ambient temperature and dehydrated condition were evaluated through dynamic compression experiments with various loading frequencies, whereas the localized viscoelasticity of bamboo's microstructural phases, viz.

Recently, unusually high detachment rates of a myosin from actin were reported with a force spectroscopy technique. Here, we show that these high rates may be due to the coupling between bond breaking and state transition. Based on a kinetic model for single myosin, rates of bond breaking between myosin and actin at different nucleotide states are systematically extracted for the first time. Our results clearly indicate that myosins may adopt much higher transition rates than bond breaking rates at different nucleotide states at relatively low forces.

PhD project 2 (Reference: NGCM-0080)

Design and optimisation of bio-inspired programmable surfaces with active materials

Biotribology Group, nCATS
Faculty of Engineering and the Environment
University of Southampton, United Kingdom

Background

PhD project 1 (Reference: NGCM-0011)

Generalised asymptotic numerical methods for buckling instability problems in biological systems and bio-inspired morphing structures

Biotribology Group, nCATS
Faculty of Engineering and the Environment
University of Southampton, United Kingdom

Background