Lukas Botz

I am an high school student at Werner-Heißenberg-Gymnasium in Weinheim. For my last two years at school I have chosen physics and social studies as my main subjects, besides german, math and english. Animated by the participation in the German Junior Academy of Baden-Württemberg I grew interest in science and became a member of life science lab in 2008. Until now I have been participating in the economics and the synthetic biology working group.

I am very glad to spend my internship with the group of Prof. Steele at the department of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. Affiliated to the Mechanics and Computation Group the team concentrates on bioengineering. Computational methods based on mechanical principals have become important tools for prediction and understanding of complex mechanical systems and therefore also for simulation of complex biological processes. A particular challenge lies in the multiscale modeling of biomechanical phenomena bridging the gap between the discrete cell level and the continuous tissue level. Precisely, the group of Prof. Steele is concerned with the development and the application of mechanical models of the auditory system.

This interdisciplinary project gives me a great opportunity to combine my interests in mathematics and mechanics with a biological issue. According to that I will focus my lab work next year especially on becoming acquainted with mechanical methods as for example the finite element method and how to apply them computationally.