Meeting Abstract

22.9  Wednesday, Jan. 4  New computational approaches to biomechanical modeling WESTNEAT, Mark W.; Field Museum of Natural History mwestneat@fieldmuseum.org

Computational approaches to complex mechanisms of feeding and locomotion in vertebrates are often challenging due to the need to account for movement in three dimensions, the mobilities of joints, the properties of muscle, and the mechanisms of force transmission from muscular motors to the output and behavior. Custom software development may often be the best choice for biomechanical modeling, allowing maximal flexibility for model design and potential for interaction between data analysis and on-screen visualization. This lightning talk presents several recent advances in custom software development for biomechanical analysis, including three dimensional skull morphometrics and biomechanics, software tools for the web browser, and several examples of previous skull models ported to desktop and mobile apps. NSF DEB-0844745