The fifth Japan-Switzerland Workshop on Biomechanics (JSB2017) aims to bring together actively participating scientists of the biomechanical communities of Japan and Switzerland for academic discussion and intercultural exchange. It will focus on the interdisciplinary fields of biomechanics and mechanobiology, at all scales, from molecules, to cells, to tissues and a whole organism.

Biomechanical and biophysical approaches are penetrating biology rapidly and steadily, and more and more researchers are realizing that consideration of the mechanical aspects is crucial to essential understanding of biology. A gap that existed between molecular and cellular biophysics and classical biomechanics fields like muscle, bone and cardiovascular biomechanics is closing as the researchers at the molecular and cellular level become more and more interested in the implications of their findings at the organismal level. Vise-versa, researchers in the classical biomechanics fields look for molecular and cellular bases of biomechanical phenomena. Moreover, computational modeling approaches penetrate and bridge multiple scales and levels of research.

In this spirit, the scientific motivation for this workshop is to bring together researchers from all fields of biomechanics to give an overview of recent progress in the quantitative description, modeling and simulation of biomechanical processes. In particular, there will be an exchange of the most recent scientific information among Japanese and Swiss biomechanics scientists, biophysicists, mechanical and biomedical engineers, biologists, physicists, and graduate students during 3 days.

The Japanese-Swiss cooperation on biomechanics originates from the close personal relationship between Prof. Jean-Jacques Meister at EPFL, Switzerland and Prof. Kozaburo Hayashi at Osaka University, Japan (currently at Okayama University of Science). They had been exchanging scientific information for a long time as their laboratories had common biomechanical research subjects. Faculty members and graduate students in both laboratories had often visited their counter laboratories for joint studies on the functional adaptation and remodeling of biological tissues, as well as on cellular mechanics. Within this connection, they organized the First SJB "New Directions in Cellular and Tissue Engineering" held in Les Diablerets in September 2001, which was continued by the Second JSB on "New Trends in Biomechanics: from Biomolecule to Tissue" held in Kyoto in September 2005 (Co-organizers: Profs. Masaaki Sato from Tohoku University, Japan and Nikolaos Stergiopulos from EPFL, Switzerland). The Third SJB was on "Biomechanical Imaging: from Nano to Macro" held in Engelberg in September 2009 (Co-organizers: Profs. Ralph Müller from ETH Zürich, Switzerland, and Masao Tanaka from Osaka University, Japan) and the Fourth JSP was on "Biomechanics and Mechanobiology: a Fusion of Disciplines" (Co-organizers: Profs Takeo Matsumoto from Nagoya Institute of Technology and Jess Snedeker University and from ETH Zurich). So we are loooking forward to welcome you to the 5th SJB 2017 which will be held in Zermatt.