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Alena Jonášová and Libor Lobovský from the Department of Mechanics at the Faculty of Applied Sciences of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen (FAV UWB) are connected by biomechanics. That is, the application of mechanical principles in biological systems. Alena Jonášová focuses on blood flow in blood vessels. Her research helps to better understand how some vascular diseases arise and how they can be prevented or treated. Libor Lobovský focuses on how to fix bone fractures so that they heal faster and more efficiently.

What led you to research bone fracture fixation and blood flow in blood vessels? Was it by chance, or was it something you were already working towards during your studies?

A. J.: I have been interested in biomechanics, or more specifically blood flow, since high school when I was excited about learning math and biology and wanted to further develop it in the form of biomechanics. I then joined the Department of Mechanics at FAV, where I gradually developed an interest in blood flow. I then did my thesis on blood flow in bypass grafts, which are vascular replacements. Give or take, I followed up on the research plan at that time and have continued de facto to the present.

L. L.: I got into it by accident (laughs). I originally did blood flow, as did my colleagues. Then one day our professor came in and said that he had been approached by orthopaedic surgeons interested in fixing pelvic fractures. He asked if I would be willing and able to participate. Somehow I couldn't say no, so I started doing it.

How would you explain your work to someone who has no expertise in this area? What is the main point of it?

A. J.: The essence of our work is the simulation of blood flow in blood vessels. If I were to put it in very layman's terms, we are looking at blood flow in a complex pipe, and we are primarily interested in where deposits can occur, damage can occur, or where a vessel can even potentially rupture. Our job is therefore to determine what the risk area is and whether medical intervention is required - either surgical or requiring appropriate treatment. Unlike my colleague who studies fixations in general, I work with patient-specific data, taking into account the uniqueness of the patient. For example, blood flow has a major influence on the shape of blood clots forming in blood vessels. If the flow is fast enough, the clot structure is very specific, or if it is unstable, the clot can break off and travel in the vasculature, which is not good and is often the cause of, for example, stroke.

L. L.: The project we are working on concerns pelvic ring fractures. We are working closely on this project with doctors from the University Hospital Pilsen, who have a lot of clinical data and experience. But in the case of pelvic ring fractures, there is not much clinical data. These are serious injuries - for example, injuries after car or serious sports accidents, when, for example, a skier hits a tree at high speed, a climber falls off a cliff, and so on. In some cases, in older patients with severe osteoporosis, this can then involve common falls. We deal with pelvic fractures experimentally in the laboratory, where we have bone models on which we test different fixators. Based on these experiments, we then develop a computer model - computer simulations - to determine how each fixator works. Fixators are basically screws that screw the broken parts of the bone together, or fixators create a structure that bridges the fracture and holds the pelvic ring together. Recently, we have been interested in fixators that are introduced not only into the pelvis but also into the spine. This applies to unstable fragility fractures of the sacrum, for which fixation is often introduced during open surgery. We are trying to show that these fractures can be fixed just as well minimally invasively. This means much less burden for the patient and a much lower risk of postoperative complications.

L. L.: I can't answer that because I don't know. We try to give doctors answers to their questions, and then they can use that as a guide when they decide to operate on a particular patient. There are not many cases that are involved. The fractures we are interested in are very rare, only a few a year. Most of them involve motorcyclists. So summer is the season when more of these injuries happen than ever. That is why it makes sense to do this research, because there are so few of these cases that there is not enough data from medical practice for doctors to rely on.

A. J.: Since our research is still evolving, even I cannot say at the moment the specific number of patients that my research could help, but I hope it will happen in the near future.

What advice would you give to students who would like to go in the same direction as you? What qualities or skills should they have?

A. J.: They certainly shouldn't be afraid of challenges, but they shouldn't be afraid of dead ends either. For example, I work with mathematical models that have to be developed, tested, verified. And unfortunately, it can happen that there is a dead end here and there, and even if you spend some time on research, it doesn't lead anywhere, or the model doesn't correspond to reality at all. You also need to be passionate about biology and mechanics, or at least mathematics, and maybe take it as a bit of a mission.

L. L.: What we do is on different levels. If someone is interested in mathematics, they can develop a mathematical model to describe, for example, blood flow. But in the same way, a person who is not so interested in mathematics, but is friends with it, can do biomechanics and can do experiments, build experimental devices. Or it can be a person who doesn't want to sit in a laboratory and put together a measuring apparatus or a mathematical model, but enjoys creating computer simulations, for example, where data about a particular patient from doctors is converted into a virtual computer model. Or it could be a person who, in addition to math or physics, enjoys programming and wants to create computer programs that make that possible.

What does a typical day look like for a scientist at FAVka?

L. L.: You can customize your day here. We're at FAVka, at the university. It's an advantage of the university environment that you can build your day the way you need it. Plus, we don't do the same activity every day, which is also nice. There's a mix of biology, maths, physics, computers, programming... You can just find what you enjoy and have that as your focus, as we're all strong in something different.

A. J.: By doing multidisciplinary stuff, we can get students excited about biomechanics. I've had great experiences in recent years supervising undergraduate and graduate theses, where new impulses and new insights on the subject have come directly from the students. So interaction with other people (students, doctors) is also very important. It's not just about sitting at the computer and doing experiments.

What are the most common mistakes you encounter from the outside?

A. J.: I think the most common misconception I've encountered since my master's thesis is that outsiders think that all we have to do is give us the data and we just push a button and we have the results. That's never how science has worked, it's always taken time and development.

What motivates you the most in your scientific work? Is it the desire for knowledge, the opportunity to help people, or something else?

A. J.: I would say everything, and something more. It's also the diversity, the flexibility, the university environment... It's a mix of everything.

L. L.: It's creative work that is not bound by patterns and established procedures. It's not about coming to work and doing the same thing for eight hours, just like yesterday, the day before and the day before that. It's about finding solutions to problems and you have to be creative about it.

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