Introduction

SSB meetings are broad in scope. Topics include all aspects of materials for surgical and medical use and their interactions with cells and tissues. Studies of tissues as materials, including their mechanical properties, are also of interest. Papers can describe research, development, lab evaluation, or results of animal and clinical studies based on biomaterials, including characterization of retrieved specimens.

Our annual meetings are open to everyone interested in biomaterials science and engineering. Attendees typically include engineers, scientists, graduate students, physicians/surgeons/dentists in practice or still in training, and everyone from industries dealing with biomaterials. Students are especially encouraged to attend and to submit both podium presentations and posters.

2012 Meeting Theme & Structure

The meeting was organized by Dominique Rothenfluh, Karin Wettstein, Bert Müller and Marc Bohner. The topic was "Biomaterials in Orthopaedic Surgery: From Bench to Bedside and back".
There were three invited talks:

• F. Witte (Hannover, Germany) on "Biodegradable metals as temporary implants: Historically from bedside to bench and back",
• A. Schweizer (Zurich, Switzerland) on "Application of rapid prototyping in complex corrective osteotomies",
• P. Heini (Bern, Switzerland) on "Biomaterials in spinal fusion".

These keynote speakers shared the podium with biomaterials students and scientists from Switzerland and abroad, who presented 9 oral communications, 19 posters, and 12 last-minute posters. All presented oral and poster abstracts are now published in the eCM journal, the official journal of the SSB. Slightly less than 100 researchers, students, clinicians and industry representatives attended the meeting. Two awards for the best student presentations were given:

• Yannick Loosli (RMS Foundation / Balgrist hospital / ETH Zurich) for his talk on " A maturation thresholding process regulates cell adhesion at the distal lamellum",
• Ana Bela Faia-Torres (ETH Zurich & University of Minho, Portugal) for her poster on " Osteogenic differentiation of human bone marrow stromal cells via polycaprolactone roughness gradients in the absence of dexamethasone".

The SSB sponsors (http://ssb.biomaterials.ch/sponsorship/sponsors) and the sponsors of SSB 2012 (Balgrist hospital, Medtronic, RMS Foundation, RTI Biologics/Tutogen/Novomedics, and Synthes) are thanked for their support.