Professor Blunn and his team have worked in partnership with Mr Fitzpatrick to develop these weight-bearing implants, combining engineering mechanics with biology.

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The platform is a result of a collaboration between the Swiss and German institutes, as well as the University of Rome, the Institute of Applied Mechanics and the Institute of Automatic Control Engineering, in Munich.

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He won an academic scholarship to the University of Florida, in Gainesville, where he joined the swim team and earned a degree in engineering, a subject that interested him only insofar as it illuminated the mechanics of, say, how to level a structural foundation or gut-renovate a house.

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