Madrid / September 4, 2023

The Leonardo Scholarships are intended to support personal projects of researchers and cultural creators in intermediate stages of their career, between 30 and 45 years old, that are characterized by significant scientific, technological or cultural production. In this 2023 call, a total of 1,116 applications have been received, with 58 of them being selected. In the evaluation of the candidates, following the rules of the call, both the excellence of the applicant’s CV and the originality of the project presented have been taken into account.

The project with which he obtained the scholarship is titled “Personalized models of the lens to improve cataract and presbyopia operations”

The award-winning research project

Cataract surgery is the most performed in many hospitals in the world with nearly 28 million interventions per year. In it, the opacified lens of the eye is replaced by an artificial intraocular lens whose power must be precisely selected before the operation to leave the patient with clear vision. In clinical practice, power is chosen using a mathematical formula that depends on the curvature of the cornea and the length of the eye of each patient, measured before the operation. However, this formula fails in eyes with “atypical” geometry, leaving the patient with blurred vision, requiring a second operation on multiple occasions.
The objective of this project will be to improve the estimation of the power to be implanted and thus the results of the surgery, using novel measures that we have recently proposed and artificial intelligence methods.