The event ran 29 - 30 October at Tøyen Hovedgård in Oslo and was arranged by Irep Gözen from NCMM together with Andreas Carlson and Kent-Andre Mardal from the Department of Mathematics department,University of Oslo.
The event was fully sponsored by UiO: Life Science with NCMM and Department of Mathematics providing administrative support. Carl Henrik Gørbitz, the Director of UiO: Life Science, gave the opening speech at the workshop.
Biomechanics is the study of biological systems, at any level from whole organisms to organs, cells and cell organelles, using the methods of mechanics. It therefore has many applications across different fields within the area of life sciences.
Bringing researchers from different life sciences together
The BioMechanics workshop in its interdisciplinary nature provides a unique opportunity for researchers from different fields such as mathematics, medicine, biology, chemistry and physics to meet. The interdisciplinary nature of the workshop is what is of special interest to many of the participants.
Tapio Ala-Nissilä, Professor of Physics from Aalto University in Finland, who was also one of the speakers, said that the breadth of the disciplines represented at the meeting and the possibility of interdisciplinary work are what he finds most interesting in the workshop. There's always something new to learn and he gets new ideas.
He explained that many of the concepts from physics can be applied to other fields, but that often different fields use very specific terminology and therefore communication between the fields can be challenging.
"The workshop provides a good opportunity to develop cross-disciplinary communication", Ala-Nissilä emphasised.
He finds it interesting to learn what kinds of problems researchers in different fields are facing and how they go about solving them.
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Another speaker, Dr. Susanne Liese from the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Germany, also emphasised the importance of this kind of interdisciplinary meeting. The workshop gave her an overview of what people are doing in their own fields with the possibility to start collaborations.
Jan Martin Nordbotten, Professor from University of Bergen, valued the possibility to meet people and gain more knowledge about what they find interesting within their areas of research. The workshop provided him with new inspiration.
Inga Poldsalu is a postdoctoral fellow at Irep Gözen's group at NCMM. She also appreciated the possibility to come into contact with people from different fields. Hearing from researchers from a diverse range of disciplines offered new insights.
Nathalie Jurisch-Yaksi is a researcher in neuroscience from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. She came to the workshop to find people she could collaborate with in Norway. She highlighted the importance of building a local network and stronger connections between the universities in Norway.
This year the workshop was attended by 40 researchers with clearly high levels of enthusiasm for working together and learning from each other.
Irep Gözen commented:
"As the ambassador of the American Biophysical Society in Norway I am very happy to see researchers coming together from different parts of Scandinavia and from Germany, to share their ideas and research in biomechanics which is a subfield of biophysics.”
Thank you to all attendees and organisers for making such an inspiring event.