UTC’s Bio­me­chan­ics and Bio­engi­neer­ing Lab­o­ra­to­ry (BMBI) orga­nized the 49th Con­gress of the Bio­me­chan­ics Soci­ety, from Octo­ber 29 to 31, 2024 at UTC’s Pierre-Guil­lau­mat Cen­tre. Two hun­dred and fifty mem­bers of the French-speak­ing bio­me­chan­ics com­mu­ni­ty attended.

“Aging well, improv­ing the qual­i­ty of human life from birth to senes­cence” was the theme of the 49th Con­gress of the Société de Bio­mé­canique, open to all those involved in bio­me­chan­ics, includ­ing research sci­en­tists, stu­dents, lec­tur­ers, prac­ti­tion­ers and clin­i­cians. Under­pinned by the vision of the UTC-BMBI lab­o­ra­to­ry, a wide range of top­ics were cho­sen, cov­er­ing all areas of bio­me­chan­ics, from the mus­cu­loskele­tal sys­tem to the car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem, includ­ing move­ment analy­sis, dis­abil­i­ty, sport and tis­sue engi­neer­ing. Three expert speak­ers pre­sent­ed their work in ple­nary ses­sions. Danièle Noël, from the Insti­tute for Regen­er­a­tive Med­i­cine and Bio­ther­a­py (IRMB), Mont­pel­li­er, talked about “Mes­enchy­mal stro­mal cells and extra­cel­lu­lar vesi­cles for the treat­ment of osteoarthri­tis and osteoar­tic­u­lar repair and the impact of cel­lu­lar senes­cence”. The main objec­tives of its research projects are to iden­ti­fy the mol­e­c­u­lar mech­a­nisms involved in the ther­a­peu­tic effect of the cells and their vesi­cles, to devel­op opti­mized pro­duc­tion process­es for these ther­a­peu­tic prod­ucts, and to gen­er­ate in vit­ro osteo-artic­u­lar mod­els using 3D bio­print­ing, with the aim of mod­el­ling the artic­u­la­tion and gen­er­at­ing mini-organ­ic repair devices. “This is the sec­ond time in 16 years that UTC has orga­nized this French­s­peak­ing con­fer­ence, open to the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. The aim is to encour­age and pro­mote research in all areas of bio­me­chan­ics. This main­ly con­cerns the human being at dif­fer­ent scales. In par­tic­u­lar, it gives young research sci­en­tists the chance to present their work and defend it in front of their peers.

This year, with Cécile Legal­lais and my col­leagues from the BMBI lab­o­ra­to­ry, we have cho­sen the theme of “age­ing well”. We know that today’s pop­u­la­tion is age­ing rapid­ly, and that by 2030, one per­son in six world­wide will be aged 60 and over. We’re try­ing to gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the mod­i­fi­ca­tions and adap­ta­tions of the neu­ro-mus­cu­lo-skele­tal sys­tem, in order to pre­vent the risks when falling and pro­pose pre­ven­tive and assis­tive solu­tions”, explains Khalil Ben Man­sour, research engi­neer in the BMBI lab­o­ra­to­ry at UTC and trea­sur­er of the Société de Bio­mé­canique for a two term office.

Understanding how humans move

“I’m pas­sion­ate about under­stand­ing human move­ment. Our aim is to opti­mize ges­tures, tak­ing into account the envi­ron­ment, in order to min­i­mize ener­gy expen­di­ture while pre­serv­ing safe­ty. This analy­sis takes into account indi­vid­ual fac­tors such as age, gen­der, habits and the mor­pho­log­i­cal and func­tion­al speci­fici­ties of a giv­en per­son. The emer­gence of AI rais­es ques­tions about human-machine inter­ac­tions and the poten­tial for human sub­sti­tu­tion in cer­tain com­plex and ardu­ous tasks. Nev­er­the­less, in the social domain, the human being remains irre­place­able thanks to his unique lev­el of con­scious­ness”, con­tin­ues Khalil Ben Man­sour. One of the key moments of the con­gress was also devot­ed to high­light­ing young and estab­lished research sci­en­tists and engi­neers, with the pre­sen­ta­tion of the Société de Bio­mé­canique prizes, such as the the­sis prize and the young research sci­en­tist prize. Pro­fes­sor Julien Hus­son, a research sci­en­tist and lec­tur­er at the Lab­o­ra­toire d’Hy­dro­dy­namique (Lad­HyX) at the École Poly­tech­nique-CNRS at the Insti­tut Poly­tech­nique de Paris, was one such young bio­me­chan­i­cal research sci­en­tist. He pre­sent­ed his work on “cell mechan­ics”, enti­tled “Method­olog­i­cal devel­op­ments, rigid­i­fi­ca­tion of immune cells and links between pho­to­tox­i­c­i­ty and cell mechan­ics”. The con­gress last­ed three days, with guest pro­fes­sors from Cana­da and else­where. There were also a num­ber of con­vivial high­lights, includ­ing a gala din­ner and a beau­ti­ful walk in the near­by Com­piègne forest.

KD