Georg is Vice-Director of the Berlin-Brandenburg Center for Regenerative Therapies (BCRT) and the Director of the Julius Wolff Institute for Biomechanics and Musculoskeletal Regeneration at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin in Germany. He is interested in the tension between the fields of biology and mechanics. He is involved in investigating the interaction between bone and muscles as well as the biomechanical influences and its impacts in both the intact and injured musculoskeletal system (e.g. loading of joints and bones). Particularly, he focuses on the interaction between the physical and mechanical conditions, and the biological regeneration of the musculoskeletal system. By using examples of bone and cartilage healing, he demonstrated the importance of biomechanical characteristics for cells and tissues of the human musculoskeletal system. He showed that a certain amount of mechanical stimulation is helpful to healing, while too much could result in a delay to the healing processes. He is also involved in research on regenerative medicine. With his work he aims to understand the body’s own processes, and where necessary, to stimulate them, so as to reproduce natural regeneration of the musculoskeletal system. The basic understanding of mechanical stimulation helps activation of the endogenous healing processes to be targeted, understood and guided.
Dr. Duda received a degree in Precision Engineering and Biomedical Engineering from the Technical University in Berlin. After working as a Special Project Associate in the Biomechanics Lab at the Mayo Clinic in 1991 and 1992, he became a Ph.D. student in the Biomechanics Department of the Technical University in Hamburg-Harburg where he received his Doctorate in 1996. He was also engaged as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Section Trauma Research and Biomechanics at the University Ulm. In 1997 he became Head of the Research Department at the Center for Musculoskeletal Surgery (CMSC) at the Charité. In 2001, he habilitated and accepted a call to a Professorship in “Biomechanics and biology of bone healing”. Since 2008 he is the Director of the Julius Wolff Institute and W3-Professor for Biomechanics and Musculoskeletal Regeneration.