Prof. Jeffrey Weiss
Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Adjunct Professor Department of Orthopedics and School of Computing, University of Utah
Friday, Mar. 3rd at 11:00am
WEB 3780
Zoom: https://utah.zoom.us/j/93606604516

Please RSVP, lunch will be provided

ABSTRACT: In this talk I will introduce the FEBio solver and FEBio Studio, the integrated graphical user interface (UI) for FEBio (www.febio.org). The FEBio project is an ongoing collaboration between Dr. Jeff Weiss’ laboratory at the University of Utah and Dr. Gerard Ateshian’s laboratory at Columbia University. FEBio is a finite element solver that was designed specifically for solving problems in computational biomechanics, bioengineering, and biophysics. It accomplishes this goal by providing constitutive models, loading conditions, and modeling scenarios that are relevant for these fields. In addition to the full multiphysics capabilities present in previous versions of FEBio, the latest version includes biphasic-fluid-structure interactions, biphasic frictional contact, new constitutive frameworks for damage mechanics and reactive nonlinear viscoelasticity, the ability to extract orientation distribution functions from image data and use them in anisotropic constitutive models, explicit transient analysis, and robust potential-based contact formulations. FEBio Studio 2.0 is now fully aware of all features in FEBio so that the UI is updated as new features are developed and implemented. New capabilities in FEBio Studio include the incorporation of image data throughout the analysis pipeline, including support for 2D, 3D and 4D image file import from DICOM formats supported by clinical scanners and microscopes, image filtering, image based strain measurement based on DIC, DVC and deformable image registration, volume rendering and image slicing, and the ability to extract model parameters form image data and interpolate to FE meshes. The UI now includes contextual help throughout, user selections of units and propagation to all fields, and options to stay up-to-date with release or development versions.

BIO: Born in Los Angeles, California, Professor Weiss received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Applied Mechanics and Engineering Science (Bioengineering) at the University of California, San Diego, in 1989 and 1990, respectively. He earned his doctorate in Bioengineering at the University of Utah in 1994, and received postdoctoral training in the Applied Mechanics Group at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (1995-96). He is currently a Professor of Biomedical Engineering and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Orthopedics and School of Computing at the University of Utah. Weiss’ research efforts have focused on the areas of experimental and computational biomechanics, primarily applied to the musculoskeletal and cardiovascular soft tissues. Professor Weiss has been an active advocate for freely available modeling software and models in the field of Bioengineering, to promote model sharing, reproducibility of results from scientific studies and collaboration. In support of this idea, his lab developed the FEBio finite element software suite (www.febio.org). This software has seen widespread using the field of Bioengineering, with over 14,000 registered users, and its potential areas of application continue to grow as the software has been extended to include multiphysics capabilities such as multiphasic materials with multiple charged solutes, chemical reactions, computational fluid dynamics and fluid-structure interactions. Professor Weiss has received a number of highly coveted honors during his career, including a NSF CAREER Award (2002), the ASME YC Fung Young Investigator Award (2002), the ASME Van C. Mow Medal (2013), the University of Utah Distinguished Scholarly and Creative Research Award (2021). He is a Fellow of the AIMBE, ASME, and ORS.