TENET Action member awarded by the European Society of Biomechanics
In July 2026, Vancouver, Canada hosted the 10th World Congress of Biomechanics (WCB26), the world’s leading congress on biomechanics and mechanobiology, organised every four years. This edition has been jointly organised by the European Society of Biomechanics, the American Society of Biomechanics and the Canadian Society of Biomechanics. WCB provides the latest research outputs on biomechanics and brings together researchers and scientists expert in wearable sensors, artificial intelligence, regenerative medicine, and novel devices, to name a few.
ESB awards promote excellence in biomechanics research to foster integration of clinical and basic science, and to facilitate the translation of that science to health care and clinical practice.
The ESB Early Career Research Award, initiated in 2023, recognises the development of an outstanding young researcher in the process of career consolidation, who contributes to the advancement of the theory and/or applications of Biomechanics and/or mechanobiology.
Dr Alberto Sensini is a postdoctoral researcher at the Universities of Maastricht and Groningen and working groups member of TENET COST Action. Dr Sensini has been awarded the prestigious and competitive Early Career Research Award.
He is being recognised for the results achieved through his European Commission, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship project, 3NTHESES conducted at the MERLN Institute under the supervision of Professors Lorenzo Moroni and Martijn van Griensven. His participation in the conference, in Vancouver was supported by TENET COST Action through the Young Researcher and Innovator Conference Grant.
“I am extremely proud that the ESB Awards and Reviewers Committee has decided to award the work we did during my 3NTHESES project and to the TENET COST Action for having supported my travel with a Young Researcher and Innovator Conference Grant. This is a confirmation of the potential of these innovative nanofibrous biomimetic metamaterials we developed during the project, and all the experimental processes adopted to validate them. Nice to see that, a few years after the award of the ESB Best Doctoral Thesis in Biomechanics (which I received in 2019 for my thesis done at the University of Bologna), the work was able to evolve and produce such interest by the international scientific community.“
Dr Alberto Sensini
“I would also sincerely acknowledge some European leading Institutions and researchers that accepted the challenge to help us validate these innovative enthesis-inspired scaffolds. Among them, I would acknowledge the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility of Grenoble and their scientists and the University of Greenwich for the strong experimental work of digital volume correlation and in situ mechanics for validating the auxetic properties of scaffolds. I would also like to acknowledge the University of Bari and Sassari for the incredible in vivo experiment, and the Rizzoli Orthopaedic Institute for the support in the post-processing of scaffolds and tissues after the experiment.”
Dr Alberto Sensini
About his project, Dr Sensini explains:
“3NTHESES (n. 101061826), aimed to design innovative biomimetic scaffolds, matching electrospinning and 3D-printing to regenerate in a multiscale fashion enthesis tissue (tendon-to-bone attachment), furnishing preliminary guidelines for a new generation of personalised patient-specific tissue regeneration.”
Launched in 2023, Tendon Regeneration Network COST Action (TENET) aims to establish a scientific network of excellence, primarily based in Europe, that integrates academic institutions, research laboratories, clinicians, biotechnology companies, and regulatory authorities. This multidisciplinary network will enhance scientific and industrial capacity to develop, evaluate, and translate advanced regenerative therapies into clinical practice, with the goal of promoting tendon tissue regeneration and restoring tendon function.
Since November 2024, COST has introduced further measures to support Young Researchers and Innovators. Young Researcher and Innovator Conference Grants are offered by COST Actions to facilitate attendance at beneficial international conferences that are not organised by the Action. More about Supporting the careers of young researchers and innovators.
