OCTOBER 8 — As a statistician, I’ve always seen my role in research as one of precision, rooted in numbers and models.

When I first started collaborating with Prof Firdaus Hariri, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon, I didn’t expect that our work together would lead to a tool that could improve the lives of children born with cranial deformities.

Our journey began in 2018 when we came up with an idea that brought together our seemingly unrelated fields — surgery and mathematics.

The result was CranioMax 3D, an application that has changed how surgeons plan treatments for children with syndromic craniosynostosis.

For those unfamiliar, syndromic craniosynostosis occurs when the bones in a child’s skull close too early, leading to deformities that affect not only appearance but also functions like breathing, vision, and brain development.

Before CranioMax 3D, surgeons faced a tough challenge in predicting how these children’s skulls would grow over time.

The condition is complex, and various factors — such as age, syndrome type, and soft tissue issues — make surgical planning extremely difficult.

When we first started thinking about this problem, it was clear that surgery alone couldn’t provide the full solution.

I saw the potential for mathematics and data modelling to fill in those gaps, to help predict how a child’s skull might grow and how surgery could shape that growth.

By combining our skills, we developed the CranioMax 3D application. This tool uses data to give surgeons a clearer picture of what might happen after surgery, making it easier to plan and, ultimately, improve the outcome for each child.

But this project wasn’t just about math or surgery — it was about collaboration. The work we did relied on the expertise of not only surgeons and mathematicians, but also radiologists, biomedical scientists, and software engineers.

What started as a conversation between two people grew into a project that involved an entire team of researchers, each contributing something vital to the process.

The beauty of CranioMax 3D is in how it brings together knowledge from different disciplines to solve a real-world problem.

We didn’t each work on our own little piece of the puzzle and then fit it all together at the end. Instead, we worked closely throughout the project, learning from each other as we went.

This kind of interdisciplinary collaboration isn’t always easy. You have to be open to new ideas and willing to admit when you don’t know something. But it’s also where the real breakthroughs happen.

When we created the application, we weren’t just trying to make life easier for surgeons. We wanted to make a real difference in the lives of children and their families.

Syndromic craniosynostosis doesn’t just affect a child’s physical appearance; it can impact their entire future.

The CranioMax 3D application is designed to help surgeons better predict outcomes and improve the success of surgeries, giving these children a better chance at a healthy, normal life.

Looking back, it’s clear that this project could never have succeeded if we’d stayed within our own areas of expertise. I would never have developed a surgical tool on my own, and Prof Firdaus couldn’t have created the data models necessary to make it work without the help of mathematicians like me.

We needed each other’s skills and insights to create something truly useful. More importantly, we needed the contributions of everyone on the team — the radiologists who understood the medical images, the engineers who helped build the software, and the students who brought fresh ideas to the table.

What this experience has taught me is that innovation doesn’t happen in isolation. It comes from opening yourself up to new ideas, from talking to people outside your own field, and from working together to find solutions that none of us could create alone.

In the academic world, it’s all too easy to stick to your own discipline and to work only with people who see things the way you do. But that limits the potential of what we can achieve.

My hope is that other researchers will see the value in collaboration. The challenges we face in science and medicine today are bigger than any one discipline.

By working together, by combining different ways of thinking, we can tackle problems that seem impossible.

To all the researchers out there — step outside your field. Talk to someone whose work seems unrelated to yours.

Collaborate in unexpected ways. It might not always be comfortable, but the results can be powerful.

Together, we can find the solutions that will change lives, just as we did with CranioMax 3D.

Let’s make it a common practise, to bring our unique skills to the table and create innovations that truly matter.

* Dr Norli Anida Abdullah is a senior lecturer from the Centre for Foundation Studies in Science, Universiti Malaya, and may contacted at norlie@um.edu.my

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.