Roberto Contro, born in Milano, Italy, on 1941, is professor of Industrial Bioengineering Biomechanics at Politecnico di Milano (Technical University of Milan), where he gives the following courses: Continua and Structure Mechanics for students of biomedical engineering (BS Course), Computational Modelling (MS Course) and Numerical Methods for Material Science and Engineering (PhD Course) for students of material engineering. Since the beginning of his academic career, as a Research Assistant of Structural Mechanics and then as an Associate Professor of Theory of Plasticity he has been dealing with constitutive and geometrical non linearity exhibited by mechanical behaviour of materials and structures. These features prevailed on specific peculiarities of civil engineering, to which his original culture belonged, so putting beforehand the methodological bases to reorient his scientific experiences towards analysis and design problems in biomechanics, where basically tissues, biomaterials and devices are affected by mechanical non linearity. His former academic commitments were connected to this culture and, for instance, he was called to found the new school of materials engineering in Trento (1986), the first one in Italy, where he was the Dean until 1991. Combining or coordinating different cultural competences was also his conceptual aim when in 1996 he was elected at the same time Head of Department of Structural Engineering and Coordinator of all the Departments of Politecnico. Since then he left his traditional topics of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, whose Italian Association he was also the Vice-President, to fully dedicate to Biomechanics and particularly to Biomaterials. In fact his research activity advances by bridging structural and material mechanics with biomedical applications, mainly investigated from computational point of view. Realizing the limits of such an approach in solving real problems from industries and clinical centres, and wishing to offer high quality training to students and young engineers, he promoted and still supports the Laboratory of Biological Structure Mechanics (LaBS).
Since April 2005 he has been committed by the President of the Course of Degree of Materials Engineering for promoting the International Relations concerning research and education in materials engineering. This commitment was implemented already in the past by promoting the international mobility of the best BS, MS and PhD students of materials engineering, thus getting appreciated and grateful acknowledgements for students and the training and research environment of the materials engineering at Politecnico di Milano. In the frame of the above activity an 'Athens course', attended by 15 students coming from several European students, on "Functional Materials for Biomedical Application with particular reference to Functional Graded Materials (FGMs)" was given together with Dr. Pasquale Vena and contributed by Gabriele Dubini, Giampaolo Fanzoso, Dario Gastaldi and Andrea Li Bassi, from March 14 to 18, 2005. A unified overview of LaBS has been given at ATEMA '2007, Int.Conference on Advances and Trends in Engineering Materials and their Applications held in Montreal from August 6 to 10, 2007, where the plenary lecture "Importance of Materials for a lab wholly dedicated to biomedical applications" was a good opportunity to present to a selected audience all research fields and related results obtained by LaBS people.

Publications:

1. Runza M., Pietrabissa R., Mantero S., Albani A., Quaglini V., Contro R. Lumbar dura mater biomechanics: experimental characterization and scanning electron microscopy observation, Anesthesia Analg. 1999; 88, 1317-21.

2. Vena P., Verdonschot N., Contro R., Huiskes R. Optimal shape design of a femoral head surface replacement against interface stresses and bone remodelling, Comp. Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering 2000; 3, 245-256.

3. Vena P., Contro R., Huiskes R. Optimal design of interfaces in a femoral head surface replacement prosthesis considering non linear behaviour, Structural Optimization 1999;18, 162-172.

4. Pietrabissa R., Contro R., Quaglini V., Soncini M., Gionso L., Simion M. Experimental and Computational Approach for the Evaluation of the Biomechanical Effects of Dental Bridge Misfit,
J. Biomechanics 2000; 33, 1489-1495.

5. Vena P., Quaglini V., Pietrabissa R., Contro R. Microstructural model of the mechanical behaviour of fabric vascular prostheses, Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering 2001;Proc. 3, Middleton, Jones & Pande, Eds, 725-730.

6. Quaglini V., Previdi F., Contro R., Bittanti S. A discrete-time non linear Wiener model for the relaxation of soft biological tissues, Medical Engineering & Physics 2002, Elsevier Science Ltd.; 24, 9-19.

7. Vena P., Contro R. Identification of Boundary Conditions by Iterative Analyses of Suitably Refined Subdomains at Biomaterials Interfaces, Inverse Problems in Engineering Mechanics III 2002, Elsevier Science Ltd., M. Tanaka and G.S. Dulikravich Eds; 97-106.

8. Vena P., Contro R. Micromechanical analysis of the trabecular bone stress state at the interface with metallic biomedical devices, Meccanica 2002, Special Issue, J.P.Prendergast and R.Contro, Guest Eds; 37(4-5), 431-439.

9. Vena P., Contro R. An Anisotropic Damage Model for the Evaluation of Load Carrying Capacity of Composite Artificial Ligaments, CMES, Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences 2003, Satya N.Atluri Ed.; Vol.4, Nos. 3&4, 497-506.

10. Contro R., Vena P. Computational models for biological tissues and biomedical implants, Engineering Computations 2003; Vol.20, Nos 5/6, 513-523.

11. Pini M, Zysset Ph., Botsis J., Contro R. Tensile and compressive behaviour for bovine periodontal ligament, J. Biomechanics 2004; Vol.37, N.1, 111-119.

12. Quaglini V., Vena P., Contro R., A discrete-time approach to the formulation of costitutive models for viscoelastic soft tissues, Biomechanics and Modeling in Mechanobiology 2004,3, 85-97

13. Vena P., Gastaldi D., Contro R., Effects of the thermal residual stress field on the crack propagation in graded Alumina/Zirconia ceramics, Material Sciences Forum 2005, Vols. 492-493, 177-182.

14. Carriero A., Reid, A.J., O’Reilly, P., Contro R., Pennati, G., Prendergast, O., Total shoulder arthroplasty: optimisation of glenoid component fixation design in the worst condition of implantation, Bioengineering In Ireland Conference, January 28-29, 2005, Fitzpatrick Castle Hotel, Killiney, Co. Dublin

15. Contro R., Vena P., Gastaldi D., Franzoso G., Dallolio V., Biomechanical behaviour of a new SMA spinal implant through a computational approach, Key-note lecture at the Sixth World Congress on Computational Mechanics (WCCM VI), Beijing, China, Settembre 5-10, 2004.

16. Contro R., Vena P., Gastaldi D., Franzoso G. Assessment of the biomechanical compatibility of an interspinous implant for "dynamic stabilization" through the finite element method, Journal of Mechanics in Medicine and Biology, Vol. 5, No. 2, 375-382, 2005.

17. Vena P., Franzoso G., Gastaldi D., Contro R., Dallolio V. A finite element model of the L4–L5 spinal motion segment: Biomechanical compatibility of an insterspinous device. Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp.7-16, 2005.

18. Contro R., Dallolio V., Franzoso G., Gastaldi D., Vena P., Biomechanical study of a pathologic lumbar functional spinal unit and a possible surgical treatment through the implant of an interspinous device, Biomechanics Applied to Computer Assisted Surgery, Yohan Payan Ed., Research Signpost, pp.39-52, 2005

19. Vena P., Gastaldi D., Contro R., Petrini L. Finite element computation of the fatigue crack growth rate in transformation toughening ceramics, International Journal of Plasticity vol.22, p. 895–920. 2006.

20. Vena P., Gastaldi D., Contro R. A constituent-based model for the non linear viscoelastic behaviour of ligaments. Journal of Biomechanical Engineering. 2006; 128(3): 449-457.

21. Gastaldi D., Vena P., Contro R. Hybrid microstructural finite elementmodeling for intergranular fracture in ceramic composites and coating systems. Computational Materials Science, in press.

22. D. Gastaldi, P. Vena, S. Masante, R. Contro, M. Beghi, C. S. Casari, F. Di Fonzo, A. Li Bassi, D. Tonini, C. E. Bottani, “Alumina Coatings for Wear Resistant Biomedical Devices: Manufacturing and Modelling”, AES Technical Reviews International Journal, Part A: International Journal of Nano and Advanced Engineering Materials (IJNAEM), 1 (1) 2008, 11 -19.

23. Vena P., Gastaldi D., Contro R. Determination of the effective elastic–plastic response of metal–ceramic composites. International Journal of Plasticity, vol.24, p. 483–508. 2008.

24. F. Di Fonzo, D. Tonini, A. Li Bassi, C.S. Casari, M.G. Beghi, C.E. Bottani, D. Gastaldi, P. Vena, R. Contro, Growth regimes in pulsed laser deposition of Aluminium oxide films, Applied Physics A, in press

25. Vena P., Bertarelli E., Gastaldi D., Contro R., Energy-based and local approaches to the strength analysis of ceramic laminates with thermal residual stresses through the finite element method, Mechanics Research Communications 35 (2008), pp. 576-582.

26. Bertarelli E., Gastaldi D., Vena P., Contro R., A computational approach to design high reliability ceramic laminates, The Open Mechanics Journal 2 (2008), pp. 67-72