Dear All,
Internationality entails diversity. The International Society of Biomechanics strives for diversity in its membership and activities. It strives to be a strong supporting platform for scientists of all backgrounds to learn, share, disseminate and to be heard. It strives to be welcoming and inclusive for all in the biomechanics community. The goals of diversity and internationality beautifully complement each other. The ISB’s mission to promote biomechanics internationally is naturally reflected by increasing the diversity of scientists having the opportunity to be active and successful within the biomechanics world. In the last few months we have been active in devising a platform for inclusiveness and respect by producing an ISB Codes of Conduct, which will be published on our website soon. Thank you Joe Hamill for your great work with this.
I have made it a mission during my time as President to encourage and assist biomechanists in countries which are traditionally underrepresented in ISB. A recent visit at the Shanghai University of Sport not only provided me with the opportunity to participate in an excellent scientific meeting, but more importantly a wonderful time with the School of Kinesiology’s enthusiastic and talented masters and Phd students. This really opened my eyes to the potential we as members of the ISB all have to attract people to biomechanics and encouraging young scientists to be active within ISB. Further trips planned to Brazil, Japan, China and Costa Rica/Mexico will give me more opportunities to promote biomechanics and ISB and to enthuse scientists to partake in ISB activities. In this respect the ISB Economically Developing Countries and Affiliated Society programs play an important role by financially assisting with certain forms of support. For details concerning this support please read the ”code of practice for affiliated societies” and ”EDC Get Involved” sections on our website.
Surrounded by the enthusiastic students at Shanghai University of Sport
On another note, a group of biomechanists under the lead of Tim Derrick has recently had an ISB recommendations paper on intersegmental forces and moments during human motion analysis, which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Biomechanics. This is of course the fruit primarily of the authors’ expertise and dedication in getting the paper written, but also a reflection of ISB’s continuing intention to provide universal, expert based guidelines on presenting biomechanical research. This serves many purposes, from educational material on correct science to a means of standardising the presentation of research results to facilitate efficient comparison of results. Look out for further news on this exciting development in 2020.
Finally I want to wish all of you a successful and most importantly healthy conclusion of 2019 and an exciting, fruitful and biomechanically eventful 2020!
Cheers,
Toni
ISB President
