XLVII Congress of the Iberian Society of Biomechanics and Biomaterials

Clara García Astrain is an Ikerbasque Research Fellow at POLYMAT, where she focuses on the development of functional polymers for biosensing applications. She earned her PhD in Renewable Materials Engineering from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), during which she conducted research at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT, Germany), specializing in nanocomposite hydrogels for biomedical use. Following her doctoral studies, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Chemistry and Processes for Energy, Environment and Health (ICPEES) at the University of Strasbourg (France). Upon returning to the Basque Country, she worked at BCMaterials (Leioa, Bizkaia) and later at CIC biomaGUNE (Donostia-San Sebastián, Gipuzkoa) as a Juan de la Cierva Fellow. In 2024, she joined POLYMAT, continuing her research at the intersection of materials science and bioengineering, focusing on the integration of sensing platforms within 3D cell culture models for in-situ sensing of biological processes.

Dorleta Jimenez de Aberasturi is an Ikerbasque Research Associate Professor and Ramon y Cajal Fellow leading the Hybrid Biofunctional Materials group at CIC biomaGUNEsince 2023. Dorleta graduated from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) in 2006. In 2013, she received her Ph. D. in cotutelle between the UPV/EHU and Philipps University of Marburg under the joint supervision of Prof. T. Rojo, Dr. I. Ruiz de Larramendi and Prof. W. Parak. She trained as a postdoc in the group of Prof. L. Liz-Marzán, specializing in the synthesis and functionalization of colloidal plasmonic nanoparticles. She has a broad expertise in hybrid nanostructured materials for bio-applications. Her group focuses on the development of functional hybrid materials for the biofabrication of 3D dynamic in vitro models and on the development of contrast agents and/or biosensors to understand those models and different biological processes.

Dr Camarero-Espinosa is an Ikerbasque Fellow and PI at the POLYMAT institute where she stablished the BioSmarTE group in 2021. The group activities focus on the regeneration of complex tissues through the design of smart implantable scaffolds. This passes through the design of stimuli responsive systems, the exploitation of techniques such as 3D (bio)printing and the understanding of stem cell processes and their interactions with biomaterials. Sandra obtained her PhD degree in 2015 in Polymer Chemistry and Bioengineering from the Adolphe Merkle Institute (Fribourg, Switzerland) and was recognized with an award for an outstanding PhD thesis by the Swiss Chemical Society. After gaining an early post-doctoral fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation, in 2015 she moved to Brisbane (Australia) to work at the AIBN Institute (Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, University of Queensland) where she continued her research in instructive biomaterial scaffolds and their interaction with stem cells. She then joined in 2017 the MERLN institute at Maastricht University (The Netherlands) where she focused her studies on the fabrication of 3D printed scaffolds for the regeneration of complex tissues.

Francesco Capuano is a Serra Húnter Assistant Professor in the Department of Fluid Mechanics at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC). He earned his degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Naples "Federico II" in 2011, where he also completed his PhD in 2015. He has held postdoctoral research positions at the University of Naples (2015–2020) and the Politecnico di Bari (2021), and was a visiting researcher at Stanford University (2014) and a postdoctoral research associate at George Washington University (2017–2018). His research centers on the development of robust, high-fidelity computational methods for modeling and analyzing multiscale and multiphysics phenomena in engineering and biological systems. He places particular emphasis on scale-resolving simulations of turbulent flows, cardiovascular biomechanics, and biological fluid dynamics. Currently, he serves as principal investigator or co-investigator on several projects focused on advanced, physics-compatible numerical methods for the Navier-Stokes equations, in silico and in vivo analysis of cardiovascular flows, microplastic aggregation in the oceans, and biofilm formation under turbulent flow conditions.

A Biochemist by training I am born and bred in Pamplona. My expertise was tilted to stem cell biology during my PhD and tissue engineering in my postdoc. My PhD (completed in 2009) was centred on the application of adult stem cells on animal models of myocardial infarction. I then spent 3 years in the same group upscaling the therapy to a clinically-relevant model of infarction in pig, whilst deriving our fist human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC) lines. Afterwards, I obtained funding for a 4-year postdoc at Imperial College London, under the supervision of Prof Molly Stevens, where I gained significant experience in tissue engineering and materials, in a highly interdisciplinary environment. In 2017 I came back to Pamplona, where in 2018 I started my research group. In these last years, I have settled and established a strongly-collaborative research line, aiming to find solutions for biomedical problems through the application of cellular and biofabrication technology. My team specialised in using hiPSC-derived phenotypes and biofabrication technologies to build human myocardial tissues for therapeutic and modelling applications, with an special emphasis in cardio-oncology and transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy.

Jose Muñoz is a full professor at the department of mathematics of Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). He studied Mechanical Engineering at UPC and École Centrale Paris (ECP) and completed his PhD at Imperial College London in 2004. After a post-doctoral year at King's College London, he became lecturer at UPC, where he has remained since. He has been visiting lecturer at ECP (France), University of Newcastle (Australia) and Wisconsin-Madison (USA). His research interests are focused in the design of numerical methods for the analysis of the stability of materials, the modelling of contact problems, and elastodynamics, with special emphasis on the modelling of cell and tissue mechanics in developmental biology. He is currently working on the numerical solution of inverse problems and optimal control for studying worm locomotion, embryonic heart growth, and general morphogenesis.