Objectives

This Summer School on Biomechanics is the 8th in the series and aims to present a state-of-the-art overview of biomechanics, from protein to cell to tissue to organ with related modeling and computation, and their applications. 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.

Important elements of continuum mechanics will be provided since they constitute a starting point for the characterization of the mechanical properties of soft biological tissues. Particular emphasis will be placed on the theory of elasticity, experimental data and models of individual biomolecules, networks of proteins, living cells and organs. Also experimental techniques for the determination of the mechanical properties of cellular components and cells will be presented. Attention will also be focused on the modeling and simulation of the mechanics, chemo-mechanics and electrophysiology of proteins, cells, artery walls, the heart, the brain, adipose tissue and skin.

Throughout the course the lecturers will point to future directions and challenges in research in the broad area of biomechanics at multiple scales, and mechano- biology as well as phenomena that involve mechanical, biological and chemical interactions.