Shiva Rudraraju, University of Wisconsin
Hector Gomez, Purdue University
Johannes Weickenmeier, Stevens Institute
The response of biological structures to physical forces, both at the cell-scale and the tissue-scale, is central to understanding their development, interactions, physiology and related disease conditions. There is an increased awareness and appreciation of the mechanical and mechanobiological underpinnings of various biological phenomena like embryogenesis, cell division, collective cell motion, cell packing in tissues and tumors, wound healing, tissue formation and regeneration, to name a few. Given the invariable complexity (multi-scale, multi-physics, and multi-phase) of these phenomena, one often needs advanced computational techniques for modeling the underlying movement, mechanics, mechano-chemistry, phase evolution and configurational change processes. The goal of this minisymposium is to foster a vibrant discussion on the development of mathematical models, numerical methods, and computational simulations to study mechanics and mechanobiology across various length scales in biological systems. The scope of the phenomena being modeled can range from single cells and cell aggregates, to the tissue and organ level. Numerical methods include, but are not limited to, multi-phasic material modeling, computational mechanics, phase field modeling, level set methods, particle-based methods and machine learning.