4th Workshop 2023, Berlin
Workshop 2023 – Organizers
After three successful meetings (July 2015, May 2017, and July 2019), and an imposed pandemic intermission, the 4th International Workshop on Spine Loading and Deformation, organized by Hendrik Schmidt, Saeed Shirazi-Adl, and Idsart Kingma, was held at the Julius Wolff Institute, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin on July 5-7, 2023.
The workshop brought together nearly 100 participants from 13 countries. Researchers active in different disciplines presented 45 talks and 16 posters. The research topics covered trunk loads, postures and motions (imaging, sensors, video camera, machine learning), tissue mechanical tolerance, biological responses to mechanical load, failure and pain generation and chronicity, measurements and model studies in sports, occupational and daily living tasks, with focus on the spino-pelvic, lumbar, thoracic and cervical regions of the spine.
It has increasingly become evident that the key to further success in providing the most effective personalized care for patients suffering from spinal disorders lies in intensified cross communications and collaborations across disciplines; in other words, as elegantly phrased by late Alf Nachemson, by inter-discipline migrations.
In addition, a Virtual Special Issue in the Journal of Biomechanics has been coordinated similar to previous workshops (see: J Biomech 49 (6) (2016), J Biomech 70 (2018) and J Biomech 102 (2020)). The Virtual Special Issue (Guest Editors: I. Kingma, H. Schmidt and S. Shirazi-Adl) aims to present up-to-date progresses in spine biomechanics using state-of-the-art, existing and novel measurement and computational techniques and is expected around February 2024.