Dr Pinaki Bhattacharya
Lecturer in Solid Biomechanics
Understanding mechanisms of bone disease progression across space and time scales
Tel: +44 (0)114 222 0156
Email: p.bhattacharya@sheffield.ac.uk
Dr Pinaki Bhattacharya lectures in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Sheffield. He is also a member of the Insigneo Institute for in silico Medicine – a unique collaboration between the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Sheffield. Pinaki obtained his PhD in biomechanics (2012) from Purdue University (West Lafayette, USA) and undertook post-doctoral research in biomechanics at KU Leuven (Leuven, Belgium) and the University of Sheffield (UK). Earlier, he studied and worked in India, obtaining his first degree in engineering from IIT Kharagpur, followed by industry and academic experiences in computer-aided engineering.
Presently, Pinaki is interested in developing mechanistic theories that explain the progression of bone diseases such as osteoporosis. These “multiscale theories” integrate disease characteristics (and its determinants) from regions of space and time that are vastly different in scale, such as microscopic changes in bone morphology occurring over months and whole body movements occurring over a few minutes of walking. Pinaki is equally interested in developing clinical tools that leverage these theories in medical practice: be it to predict the risk of disease in a patient-specific manner, or to determine the efficacy of an intervention, or to design novel multifactorial interventions tailored to a group of patients. As such, this research is central to the mission of the Insigneo Institute, that is to produce a transformational impact on healthcare. Pinaki’s work on the complexity of bone disease progression is supported by the EPSRC. As a Technology Working Group member of the Royal Osteoporosis Society’s Osteoporosis and Bone Research Academy, Pinaki promotes technological solutions that will bring in a step change in prediction, prevention and diagnosis of fragility fractures.
