Yohan Payan is Director of Research at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). In 1997, he received an award from the University of Grenoble for his doctoral research on the biomechanics of speech production. In 2012, the French Biomechanics Society awarded him the Senior Prize for his research on the biomechanics for computer-assisted surgery. His main research interests concern the biomechanical modeling of soft tissues and their integration into medical devices used to assist surgeons for planning or to guide them during surgery. The corresponding applications concern plastic and maxillofacial surgery, breast cancer treatment, neurosurgery, orthopedics and pressure ulcer prevention, based on organs or musculoskeletal models. He was a Research Affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1999, Boston, USA) and visiting professor at University of Chile (2004, Santiago de Chile) and University of British Columbia (2010, Vancouver, Canada). Yohan Payan is the co-head of the Biomechanics TIMC research team (Univ. Grenoble Alpes) and the Associate Editor of the Clinical Biomechanics journal (Elsevier).