Computer science graduate Florian Burkhardt receives Fritz Kutter Prize
The Fritz Kutter Prize, endowed by the Fritz Kutter Fund, is awarded annually to recognize outstanding practice-oriented theses in computer science at Swiss universities. In November 2024, Florian Burkhardt received the prize for his Master's thesis on the reconstruction of femurs from individual bone fragments.
16 January 2025
Florian Burkhardt's thesis addresses a challenge in forensic anthropology - the identification of skeletal remains. His research explores how complete femurs can be reconstructed from bone fragments to derive biological profiles. These profiles can help identify unknown individuals.
The web application developed in his thesis enables end users to reconstruct complete bones from bone fragments. To achieve this, multiple independent components developed by the Graphics and Vision Research Group had to be integrated. A standout feature of this application is that it not only predicts the most probable bone reconstruction but also precisely quantifies the uncertainty of the prediction.
The web application has been tested by experts at the Zurich Forensic Science Institute and is set to be further evaluated in a multicenter study in 2025.
