Biomechanics of Orofacial Organs and Structures

Mohammad Ali Nazari, before acquiring his Ph.D., was a lecturer in the school of mechanical engineering at University of Tehran (UOT). After finishing his Ph.D. at the University of Grenoble on biomechanical modeling of facial musculature for speech production, he returned to UOT in 2012. He launched a biomechanics department in the school of mechanical engineering in 2014 and he is the head of this department till now. At the same time, he established a biomechanics laboratory which aims at characterizing soft tissue properties. This lab now includes many devices for soft tissue characterization from AFM, micro-indentation, twisting ultrasound to biaxial tensile
testing and 3D printing. He continued his research collaborating with different universities in the world, including University of Grenoble, ENSAM Paris, San Francisco State University (SFSU), Granada University (Spain) and recently with van Leuven university (Belgium). During this period, he published the outcome of these collaborations in journals like Biological Cybernetics, J. of Biomechanics, J. of Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials, Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering.

Pascal Perrier is full professor at Grenoble INP/Université Grenoble Alpes and researcher at Gipsa-lab in Grenoble, France. He holds the chair “Bayesian Cognition and Machine Learning for Speech Communication” of the Multidisciplinary Institute of Artificial Intelligence in Université Grenoble Alpes. His research interests include speech production, speech motor control, speech development, speech disorders, and the design of biomechanical models of the orofacial organs that are involved in speech production. He developed close international collaborations with scientists at Tehran University, Université du Québec à Montréal, McGill University, JAIST in Japan, ZAS in Berlin, Tianjin University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has co-supervised 30 PhD students and has co-authored more than 70 papers in international peer-reviewed journals, among which, recently, Nature Reviews in Neuroscience, PNAS, Cognition, J. of Biomechanics, J. of Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials, Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, J. Neurophysiology or PLoS Computational Biology.

Alfons.J.M.Balm, specialized in otorhinolaryngology followed by super-specialization in head and neck surgery. From 1990- 2016 he was appointed as Chairman of the Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cooperative Group of The Netherlands Cancer Institute and the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam. In 2003 he accepted the extraordinary Chair of Head and Neck Oncology and Surgery at the University of Amsterdam. From 2014 -2017 he was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of The Netherlands Cancer Institute. He supervised twenty eight PhD theses and twenty eight head and neck fellowships. In the framework of the Virtual Therapy project and biomechanical modelling he supervised 4 Master Theses and 24 student projects. He (co-) authored 285 international peer-reviewed papers. His scientific interest is focused on functional inoperability, prediction of functional post treatment deficits by biomechanical modelling, speech rehabilitation and prediction of speech after total laryngectomy, prognostic factors in oncology.