About 500 000 babies are born early in Europe every year, for some the condition is fatal. Complications relating to being born prematurely are the leading causes of death in the under-fives. Improving feeding, mitigating the impact on the brain and rethinking prevention – our three projects are doing what they can to push back these numbers.

Audrey van der Meer is co-director of the Developmental Neuroscience Laboratory and professor of Neuropsychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. She is particularly interested in the infant brain, with its enormous plasticity and capacity to learn from day one.

Isabel Hoffmann is a deep-tech entrepreneur. By harnessing technology and connectivity, she is working to help create a world in which food contributes to health, not to societal diseases. Her company Tellspec is developing innovative ways of personalising nutrition to help premature babies thrive.

Julien Penders is co-founder of Bloomlife, a company designing wearable technologies and predictive analytics to promote prenatal health. Bloomlife has developed a device paired with data analytics to increase access to care, provide personalised feedback to mothers, and help doctors predict and manage pregnancy complications.

For more info on the projects featured, visit: https://europa.eu/!BR3r43