The Biomechanics group is one of the leading laboratories for orthopaedic research in the world. It was founded in 1965 by engineer Alan Swanson and surgeon Michael Freeman who jointly filed one of Imperial’s first commercial patents, a knee replacement design called the Freeman-Swanson knee. Many implants currently on the market can trace their lineage back to this design. Although Freeman was an orthopaedic surgeon, he had an office in our Department of Mechanical Engineering at Imperial. He clearly felt at home amongst engineers given his father Ralph and brother Ralph were both famous civil engineers – they designed the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Humber Bridge respectively.

At the core of the group are three state of the art laboratories, a cadaver lab, additive manufacturing lab and x-ray microscopy lab. These labs provide us with the tools for our work, but more importantly the strong inter-departmental links with surgeons in theMSk Lab, materials scientists in the Department of Materials, structural engineers in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and engineers in the Department of Bioengineering provide us with unrivalled support across the engineering and medicine disciplines.