I am starting an internship at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, for a master’s thesis in biomechanics.
KTH
KTH (in swedish, Kungliga Tekniska högskolan) know as Royal Institute of Technology is a public research university in Stockholm, in Sweden. It currently carries out research in engineering and technology.
It is the largest technical university in Sweden and consists of five schools with four campuses around Stockholm. The five main schools are:
- School of Architecture and the Built Environment
- School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
- School of Engineering Sciences
- School of Engineering Sciences in Chemistry, Biotechnology and Health
- School of Industrial Engineering and Management

History
The origin of the KTH go back to 1927, as the “Teknologiska Institutet”. Initially it offers education in technological subject with a strong professional touch. The school was able to maintain good relations with the industrial establishment without having to renounce the academic aspect.
In 1877 was introduces the name Kungliga Tekniska Högskolanand with a systematic research activities. The students were also subjected to the requirement of cempleting a final degree paper. In 1927 was formally arrived the academic recognition as an establishment of higher learning with possibility to promulgate the degree of Doctor of Technology.
In 1917 KTH had moved into its own by building the core and main campus in the northern part of central Stockholm. Different subjects were studied in the four main branches of Mining Science, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Technology & Engineering and Civil Engineering. Other subject areas have then been constantly added – Building Architecture in 1877, Electrical Engineering in 1901, Naval Architecture in 1912, Surveying and Engineering Physics in 1932, Computer Science in 1983, and Industrial Economics in 1990.
Supervisor
My supervisor is Christian Gasser. He is Professor of Biomechanics at KTH.
From his descriptions it is possibile to read:
The development and application of advanced numerical techniques to solve realistic (bio)engineering and clinical problems, is Gasser’s main research objective. Constitutive models for anisotropic finite strain materials have been implemented in all major Finite Element simulation packages, such as ANSYS, ABAQUS, COMSOL, etc, and Gasser’s translational biomechanics research led to A4clinicsRE, commercial biomechanical-based simulation software for clinical decision making. He wrote one book and co-authors 2 PCT patents, appr. 100 peer-reviewed journal publications and 10+ book chapters. His work led so far to 14k Google Scholar citations and an h-index of 48. He is listed as KTH’s most influential researcher in Biomedical Engineering and ranked amongst top 2% worldwide in this field. He is Associate Editor of Int. J. for Num. Meth. in Biomed. Engrg, in the editorial board of Mechanics of Soft Materials and a EMMCC member. He is Principal founder of ARTEC Diagnosis AB as well as VASCOPS GmbH and serves a legal expert for skiing accident reconstruction at Oberlandesgericht, Graz, Austria.
Vascular Biomechanics
The main target of this period is to prepare my Master Thesis in biomechanics but about that thesis we will talk about it in later articles.