Dr. Johann Jakob Schwiedrzik

Dr. Jakob Schwiedrzik is head of the biomechanics research team at the Laboratory for Mechanics of Materials and Nanostructures of Empa Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology. He was born in Cologne, Germany, and studied Mechanical Engineering at Vienna University of Technology with an exchange year in the United States at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He received his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Bern in 2014. He joined Empa as a Postdoc working on scientific instrument development, experimental micromechanics at variable temperature and strain rate, and mechanics of thin films and biological materials. In 2017, he received an Ambizione grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) to start a re-search team on biomechanics. The work of the biomechanics research team focuses on the microscale investiga-tion of deformation mechanisms and yield properties of bone as well as their changes in the ageing skeleton. The aim is to gain a better understanding of bone fractures in order to predict fracture risk of individual patients more reliably in the future. Furthermore, other biological materials featuring a hierarchical architecture such as wood are investigated and new methods are developed for identifying nanoscale material properties based on a combined experimental and modeling approach.

Courses in the BME Master's Program