Associate Professor Thor Franciscus Besier

BPhEd (Hons) Otago, PhD in Biomechanics W.Aust

Associate Professor

In: Engineering Science » Faculty of Engineering

Biography

Thor is an Associate Professor at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute and has a joint appointment with the Department of Engineering Science. He completed his PhD in musculoskeletal biomechanics at The University of Western Australia in 2000 and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Bioengineering Department at Stanford University from 2003 to 2006. Thor established Stanford's Human Performance Laboratory as the Director of Research and was a faculty member in the Department of Orthopaedics at Stanford from 2006 to 2010, before returning home to New Zealand in 2011.

Research | Current

Thor’s research combines medical imaging with computational modelling to understand mechanisms of musculoskeletal injury and disease. In particular, he is interested in open source modelling tools to rapidly generate musculoskeletal models that can be used to diagnose and treat injury and disease. He has published more than 100 scientific articles on these topics and has received funding from the Royal Society of NZ Marsden Fund, the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA), the NZ Ministry of Business Innovation & Employment (MBIE), the Australian Research Council (ARC), US National Institutes of Health, and the Australian National Health & Medical Research Council (NH&MRC).

Project links

Musculoskeletal System

Teaching | Current

BIOMENG771 - Musculoskeletal and Orthopaedic Biomechanics (fourth year elective engineering course)

Postgraduate supervision

Thorben Pauli - Musculoskeletal modelling of the shoulder
Duncan Bakke - Gait retraining for stroke patients
Andi Liu - Finite element modelling of hip joint muscles
Nynke Rooks - Reproducibility of knee modelling
Homayoon Zarshenas - Intuitive control of a robotic exoskeleton of the ankle
Soroosh Hosseinnejad (co-supervised with Bryan Ruddy)
Mahsa Montahan (co-supervised with Bryan Ruddy)
Yahya Zakariya Yahya (co-supervised with Bryan Ruddy)
Pablo Ortega-Auriol (co-supervised with Angus McMorland)
Kelly Sheerin (Auckland University of Technology, co-supervised with Duncan Reid and Denise Taylor)
Joseph Lynch (Australian National University, Canberra)

Distinctions/Honours

2017 Winner, HealthTech Award for FormusLabs, NZ HealthTech Week.

2016 Semifinalist for New Zealander of the Year: Innovator of the Year category

2015 Winner, Australian and New Zealand Society of Biomechanics (ANZSB) Publication of the Year for: Pizzolato, C., Lloyd, D. G., Sartori, M., Ceseracciu, E., Besier, T. F., Fregly, B. J., & Reggiani, M. (2015). CEINMS: A toolbox to investigate the influence of different neural control solutions on the prediction of muscle excitation and joint moments during dynamic motor tasks. J Biomech, 48(14), 3929-3936. doi: 10.1016/j.jbiomech.2015.09.021

2015 Winner, Samsung Springboard, "IMeasureU"

2014 Winner, NZ Innovators Award, ICT & Cloud Solutions for “IMeasureU”

2013 Winner, Spark $100k Challenge, University of Auckland Entrepreneurship Challenge

2013 Marsden Fund full award, Royal Society of New Zealand

2013 Nominated for NZ Innovators Awards for “Innovation in Health & Science”

2010 Finalist, Clinical Biomechanics Award, American Society of Biomechanics (co-author)

2010 Walter Wolf Award, Society of Nuclear Medicine (co-author)

2009 Clinical Biomechanics Award, American Society of Biomechanics (co-author)

2006 Lauterbur Award, Society of Computed Body Tomography and Magnetic Resonance (co-author)

2005 Inaugural recipient of the Stanford Regenerative Medicine Postdoctoral Scholarship

2003 ASICS Best Paper-Injury Prevention and Health Promotion, Sports Medicine Australia (co-author)

2003 Finalist, Clinical Biomechanics Award, International Society of Biomechanics

2002 Recipient of “Neil Hamilton Fairley” scholarship, National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia.

2001 Young Investigator Award, International Society of Biomechanics in Sport

1999 “Prince de Merode” Award, IOC Sport Science Congress

1999 Young Investigator Award, Sports Medicine Australia

Areas of expertise

Computational modelling of musculoskeletal injury and disease, particularly:

knee osteoarthritis
patellofemoral pain
non-contact knee ligament injury
orthopaedics
wearable sensors

Committees/Professional groups/Services

ABI Principal Investigator
ABI Budget Committee
Executive Member, International Society of Biomechanics
Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering
Sports Performance Research Institute New Zealand (SPRINZ) Research Associate

Selected publications and creative works (Research Outputs)

Bahl, J. S., Zhang, J., Killen, B. A., Taylor, M., Solomon, L. B., Arnold, J. B., ... Thewlis, D. (2019). Statistical shape modelling versus linear scaling: Effects on predictions of hip joint centre location and muscle moment arms in people with hip osteoarthritis. Journal of biomechanics, 85, 164-172. 10.1016/j.jbiomech.2019.01.031
Sahrmann, A. S., Stott, N. S., Besier, T. F., Fernandez, J. W., & Handsfield, G. G. (2019). Soleus muscle weakness in cerebral palsy: Muscle architecture revealed with Diffusion Tensor Imaging. PloS one, 14 (2)10.1371/journal.pone.0205944
Other University of Auckland co-authors: Geoffrey Handsfield, Justin Fernandez, Ngaire Stott
Suwarganda, E. K., Diamond, L. E., Lloyd, D. G., Besier, T. F., Zhang, J., Killen, B. A., ... Saxby, D. J. (2019). Minimal medical imaging can accurately reconstruct geometric bone models for musculoskeletal models. PloS one, 14 (2)10.1371/journal.pone.0205628
Sheerin, K. R., Reid, D., & Besier, T. F. (2019). The measurement of tibial acceleration in runners-A review of the factors that can affect tibial acceleration during running and evidence-based guidelines for its use. Gait & posture, 67, 12-24. 10.1016/j.gaitpost.2018.09.017
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2292/46051
Al-Dirini, R. M. A., Martelli, S., Huff, D., Zhang, J., Clement, J. G., Besier, T., & Taylor, M. (2018). Evaluating the primary stability of standard vs lateralised cementless femoral stems - A finite element study using a diverse patient cohort. Clinical biomechanics (Bristol, Avon), 59, 101-109. 10.1016/j.clinbiomech.2018.09.002
Shim, V. B., Handsfield, G. G., Fernandez, J. W., Lloyd, D. G., & Besier, T. F. (2018). Combining in silico and in vitro experiments to characterize the role of fascicle twist in the Achilles tendon. Scientific reports, 8 (1)10.1038/s41598-018-31587-z
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2292/45746
Other University of Auckland co-authors: Vickie Shim, Geoffrey Handsfield, Justin Fernandez
Fernandez, J., Mithraratne, K., Alipour, M., Handsfield, G., Besier, T., & Zhang, J. (2018). Towards rapid prediction of personalised muscle mechanics: integration with diffusion tensor imaging. Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering: Imaging and Visualization10.1080/21681163.2018.1519850
Other University of Auckland co-authors: Geoffrey Handsfield, Justin Fernandez, Kumar Mithraratne, Massoud Alipour
Zhang, J., & Besier, T. F. (2017). Accuracy of femur reconstruction from sparse geometric data using a statistical shape model. Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering, 20 (5), 566-576. 10.1080/10255842.2016.1263301
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2292/41394