Barbara Solenthaler receives BRCCH grant
Senior scientist Dr. Barbara Solenthaler received one of the first grants from the Botnar Research Centre for Child Health. Her project aims to optimise the surgical treatment of cleft lip and palate with the use of machine learning algorithms, smartphone images and 3D printing.
The Botnar Research Centre for Child Health (BRCCH) has announced its first Multi-Investigator Projects (MIPs), marking the start of its research activities to improve the health and well-being of children and adolescents worldwide. Four interdisciplinary research projects were chosen from 28 total applications.
One of the selected projects is "Burden-Reduced Cleft lip and palate Care and Healing" by Dr. Andreas Mueller from the University Hospital and University Children’s Hospital Basel and Dr Barbara Solenthaler from the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich. The researchers aim to reduce the burden of surgery for cleft lip and palate using machine learning, smartphone photos and individually 3D-printed orthopedic plates. Going from a multi-step to a single-step surgery for this relatively common (around 1 in 700 children) condition is especially relevant for children in low-income settings.
In addition to Dr. Solenthaler, two professors of the Department of Computer Science are involved as collaborators in two of the funded projects. Prof. Markus Gross, head of the Computer Graphics Laboratory, collaborates on Dr. Solenthaler's project, while Professor Ce Zhang of the Data Sciences, Data Systems, and Data Services (DS3) Lab is involved in the project "Digital Support Systems to Improve Child Health and Development in Low-Income Settings".
The BRCCH was founded in 2018 by University of Basel and ETH Zurich in order to facilitate interdisciplinary research in paediatrics. It is funded by a CHF 100 million contribution from Fondation Botnar in Basel.