Dr Ben Zwick is a Research Fellow in the School of Engineering at The University of Western Australia (UWA). His mission is to apply computational science, biophysics and biomedical engineering to understand, prevent, and treat human diseases, including epilepsy, brain cancer and depression.

Ben was born in Zürich, Switzerland, and educated in Perth, Western Australia, where he earned a Bachelor's degree with honours in Mechanical Engineering and a PhD in computational biomechanics from UWA. His academic research is guided by his industry experience in engineering and design, providing a unique perspective on the practical challenges of turning ideas into reality.

Ben is dedicated to making state-of-the-art medical treatments accessible to all by democratizing healthcare through open science, open data, and open-source software and hardware for medical devices. Towards this goal, he collaborates with multidisciplinary research teams to tackle scientifically significant and challenging problems in biomedical science and engineering, where his technical expertise can make a meaningful impact, ultimately improving the health outcomes and lives of others.

• Computational science and biophysics for medicine
• Image-guided surgical planning and navigation
• Epilepsy
• Brain cancer
• Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
• Cardiovascular disease
• Computational solid and fluid mechanics
• Computational electromagnetics
• Computational biomechanics
• Biomedical engineering
• Computer and robot-aided surgery
• Mathematical modelling
• Numerical methods (especially finite element, meshless and meshfree methods)
• Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and artificial neural networks (ANNs)
• Medical image analysis and image processing
• High-performance computing

Research projects

• Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) for estimation of brain shift during neurosurgery
• Biomechanics-based neuroimage registration for tumour resection and epilepsy surgery planning
• Brain electrical activity modelling for epilepsy surgery planning
• Biomechanics of the brain-skull interface
• Simulation of needle insertion into soft tissues

Software projects

• SlicerCBM: https://github.com/SlicerCBM
• MVox: https://github.com/benzwick/mvox
• SofTiSim: https://gitlab.com/benzwick/SofTiSim
• ExplicitSim: https://bitbucket.org/explicitsim/explicitsim

Additional software can be found in the following repositories:

• GitLab
• GitHub
• Bitbucket

Ben has served as a lecturer, unit coordinator and tutor for the following units of the Bachelor of Engineering (BEng) and Master of Professional Engineering (MPE) programmes at The University of Western Australia:

• 2024: Numerical Methods and Modelling (guest lecturer for numerical integration, roots of nonlinear equations, optimisation methods and introduction to neural networks)
• 2023 – 2024: Biomechanics (unit coordinator, lecturer and tutor)
• 2022: Cardiovascular Biomechanics (unit coordinator, lecturer and tutor)
• 2021: Mechanisms and Machines (tutor)
• 2016 – 2018: Numerical Methods and Modelling (tutor)
• 2014 – 2016: Finite Element Methods (tutor)