Multiscale aspects of mechanical properties of biological materials.

Multiscale aspects of mechanical properties of biological materials have developed into an emerging area of research with impact in a broad range of disciplines ranging from medicine to materials science, defining a biomateriomics approach that facilitates a new paradigm in understanding the interplay of structure and function. Mechanical properties of biological materials are critical for virtually all physiological processes and cover all the scales, from the molecular to the macroscale, and provide access to mechanistic understanding and engineering design of novel tools for disease diagnosis, disease treatment and biomaterials development or for the transfer of biologically inspired materials and structures. The integrated use of simulation and experiment can address key challenges in this field and will result in new tools for the analysis and synthesis of complex materials.