The Activity

The BSSM marked its 60th anniversary with a special event at Airbus, bringing together members from academia and industry worldwide. The day featured expert talks, facility tours and live testing demonstrations. Highlights included historical displays, a photography exhibition, and plenty of networking. Dr Hari Arora opened the event in his final role as Chair, setting the stage for a celebration of the Society’s legacy and future.

This symposium, at the Royal Society in London, hosted clinicians, researchers, and specialists from around the world all working towards The Scar Free Foundation mission. Dr Hari Arora presented work on 3d printing, biomechanical testing and the role of modelling approaches in optimising surgical outcomes.

The British Society for Strain Measurement (BSSM) held its 18th International Conference on Advances in Experimental Mechanics in Liverpool. Dr Hari Arora, as BSSM Chair, introduced several sessions, including plenaries on 60 years of the BSSM and Blast Mechanics. Tom Pritchard presented his novel volumetric strain measurement technique.

The Team visited the facilities of Boston Scientific in Galway. The visit aimed to share recent progress on heart valve research as well as scope future directions for our research collaboration.

BEST Lab researchers Sahar Sattar and Meg McNamee engaged in an outreach initiative to discuss their academic backgrounds, career trajectories, and current projects in Biomedical Engineering.

A few of the Team (and a close collaborator) ventured off-site to perform ballistics tests on a sunny midweek afternoon. The study aimed to further our understanding of the fundamental physics of impacts under specific test and support conditions.

The British Society for Strain Measurement (BSSM) held its 8th Postgraduate Experimental Mechanics (PGEM) Conference at NPL. Dr Hari Arora, as BSSM Chair, had the pleasure of welcoming the delegates alongside Conference Chair Dr Ksenija Dvurecenska.

A workshop on particle image velocimetry (PIV) was organised by LaVision and hosted at the University of Manchester. Michael Darcy and Dr Hari Arora attended the 3-day event to refresh concepts of best practice, technical advances and discuss application ideas with the user network.

The Team celebrated the year's achievements and got into the festive spirit at the earliest opportunity! It certainly made this Friday social extra special to have almost everyone all together for a bit of fun, food and laughter before the Xmas break!

The BEST Lab presented a visual and tactile exhibit on all things biomechanics and biomaterials at this year's Swansea Science Festival, held at the Waterfront Museum. The 2-day event provided various team members the chance to showcase the breadth of their work to the public with >1000 visitors customers during the fun-filled weekend.

A delegation from Swansea University visited IIT Kanpur to establish a formalised collaboration between Institutions. Dr Hari Arora was part of the team of academics and professional services to visit IIT Kanpur to promote research activities of Swansea University and develop collaborative research themes for the future.

The British Society for Strain Measurement (BSSM) held its 17th International Conference on Advances in Experimental Mechanics in Glasgow. Dr Hari Arora, as BSSM Chair, had the pleasure of introducing several sessions and awards during the event.