The 6th International Workshop on Flow-Induced Blood Damage in Rotating Systems (BDW2026) has been a great success.
It took place on the 3rd and 4th of September 2026 in Rostock-Warnemünde, Germany.

After theAfter the first edition in 2019, its second version in 2022, the third in 2023, the fourth in 2024 and the fifth in Bath, UK, in 2025, the workshop returned to Rostock and once again provided a productive discussion platform for the research community working on flow-induced blood trauma. This year's edition brought together participants from Australia, Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany. The participants represented a range of fascinating fields, including hemolysis prediction, red blood cell deformation and fragmentation, blood pump and left ventricular assist device (LVAD) design, physiological control of heart support systems, and flow-induced stresses in rotary blood pumps and ventricular assist devices.

Highlights of this year's workshop included the keynote lecture by Professor Michael Simmonds from Griffith University, Australia, as well as presentations by well-known researchers including Dr. Friedrich Kaufmann from Charite Berlin, Germany, and Dr. Lee Nissim from the University of Bath, UK. Industry partners Abbott MCS and FineHeart also provided valuable insights into the problems and challenges that blood damage poses for their systems.

To emphasize the collaborative nature of the workshop, a dedicated discussion round was held on the BDW test case that the community is currently developing.

A special feature of our two-day workshop was the exclusive focus on flow-induced blood damage. Unlike classic conferences, where this topic is often limited to a single session with a small timeframe, each presentation in this workshop was designed to stimulate discussion in our research area, with 20 minutes of lecture and 20 minutes of discussion. In addition, rapid-fire sessions gave researchers the opportunity to present their work in a concise format.

The next workshop will be held in Berlin in 2027!

We would like to sincerely thank ERCOFTAC for sponsoring the workshop and our SIG37, along with its coordinator Prof. Franck Nicoud, for their tremendous support.

Coordinators: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Frank-Hendrik Wurm, Calvin Wolfgramm
Co-organizers: Vincenz Crone, Max Lihs, Mario Hahne, Sathvik Ballal, Karl Kasper, Kira Fechner, Robin Kratochwill, Philipp Lindauer, and Jessica Wiechmann.