Ralph Müller QMSKI Conference 2024

Ralph Müller

Dr. Müller is a Professor of Biomechanics at the Department of Health Sciences and Technology at ETH Zürich in Switzerland. He studied electrical engineering at ETH Zürich, where he also received his doctoral degree in 1994. Subsequently, he served as a project manager for the micro-computed tomography project of the EU Concerted Action BIOMED1 "Assessment of Bone Quality in Osteoporosis". At that time, Dr. Müller was involved in the development of a compact desktop micro-tomographic imaging system that since has been commercialized and is now marketed worldwide. In 1996, he moved to Boston where he served as a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at Harvard Medical School and the Associate Director of the Orthopedic Biomechanics Laboratory. Between 2000 and 2011, he was first an SNF Professor of Bioengineering at the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering and then Associate and Full Professor of Biomechanics at the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering at ETH Zürich. In 2012, he was one of the founding members of the Department of Health Sciences and Technology, which he headed from 2014 to 2016. The research he has completed and is currently pursuing employs state-of-the-art biomechanical testing and simulation techniques as well as novel bioimaging and visualization strategies for musculoskeletal tissues. Today, these techniques are successfully employed for the quantitative assessment and monitoring of structure function relationships in tissue regeneration, growth and adaptation. His approaches are now often used for precise phenotypic characterization of tissue response in mammalian genetics, mechanobiology as well as tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Dr. Müller is a prolific author of more than 1,300 scientific articles and abstracts. His work has been cited over 46,000 times on Google Scholar with an h-index of 111. He has received numerous awards, including more recently the Mike Horton Award from the European Calcified Tissue Society (ECTS), the Huiskes Medal for Biomechanics from the European Society of Biomechanics (ESB) and the Muybridge Award from International Society of Biomechanics (ISB). He is an elected member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW) and a Fellow of the European Alliance for Medical and Biological Engineering and Science (EAMBES), the World Council of Biomechanics (WCB), and the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR). In 2017, the European Research Council (ERC) awarded him with a prestigious ERC Advanced Grant. He is also active as an organizer of international symposia and workshops as well as an editorial board member and reviewer for scientific journals and funding agencies. He is a former President of the European Society of Biomechanics (ESB) and the Swiss Society for Biomedical Engineering (SSBE) and currently serves as the Secretary on the International Federation of Musculoskeletal Research Societies (IFMRS) and on the Board of Directors of the International Society of Bone Morphometry (ISBM). He has held scientific and management positions on more than 80 research grants and currently receives funding from Swiss National Science Foundation, European Union, Australian Research Council, and various ETH intramural funds. Dr. Müller is a founder and co-organizer of the ETH graduate program in Biomedical Engineering. He is teaching courses on "Imaging and Computing in Medicine", "Orthopaedic Biomechanics" and "Multiscale Bone Biomechanics" at ETH Zürich. He co-founded three spin-off companies, Pearl Technology AG, developing and marketing novel patient positioning systems for medical imaging procedures using patented technology from ETH Zürich, b-cube AG, now a subsidiary of Scanco Medical, and most recently compagOs, a diagnostics biotechnology company engineering personalized cancer in bone organoids.

Abstracts this author is presenting: