A patented sensorized pen for the early screening of writing difficulties. A study by Politecnico di Milano and the University of Insubria (Varese and Como) has been published, involving more than 700 children from across the entire primary and lower secondary school cycle. The participants used the THInkPen (Tele-Health Ink Pen) while completing two BVSCO-3 tasks, the Battery for the Clinical Assessment of Writing and Orthographic Skills. This is the most widely used test in Italy for assessing writing difficulties, dysgraphia and dysorthography.

A research team led by Professor Jiandong Ding at Fudan University has derived a set of equations for random degradation inspired by the classic Poisson raindrop problem, providing the first theoretical framework to quantify “acquired heterogeneity” — the uneven degradation that emerges during service rather than from manufacturing defects. Applying this framework to biodegradable metal stents, the team discovered that coating iron with polylactide (PLA) increases the corrosion rate by 3-fold but reduces corrosion inhomogeneity by 4,000-fold in blood-mimetic medium, paradoxically leading to later device fracture despite faster degradation. The resulting metal–polymer composite stent was validated in preclinical porcine studies, clinical trials involving 1,108 patients across multiple cohorts, and 5-year follow-up of 45 first-in-human cases, demonstrating safety, durability, and reliability. The theoretical framework is, in principle, applicable to any field where random spatiotemporal variability undermines system performance, from ship corrosion and bridge fracture to climate variability and big data analytics.

The non-profit Boehringer Ingelheim Stiftung supports LMU clinician-scientist Daniel Kotlarz through its Rise up! program.