Vietnam War Victims Identification Project To Use Bonaparte DNA Matching Software
NIJMEGEN, Netherlands, February 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
SMART Research BV have signed a contract for the provision of the Bonaparte DNA matching software system and associated support services to the Government of Vietnam. The procurement is part of a 10-year project that aims to identify at least 80,000 of the 650,000 unidentified victims from the Vietnam War.
Initiated by the Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, "Project 150" will be the largest DNA identification project ever conducted. Three laboratories will be upgraded with latest forensic technology from technology suppliers as Qiagen and Eppendorf, while consultancy and training are provided by BioGlobe and The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) in Bosnia. With the signing of this contract, SMART Research BV now proudly joins the project team.
Bonaparte's state-of-the-art indirect matching algorithms will provide the Vietnamese Government Laboratories with powerful kinship and familial search possibilities required for this ambitious project. The Bonaparte system allows for identification of unknown remains based on reference DNA from family members using arbitrary pedigree trees.
The Bonaparte system has been deployed in real world identification work on many occasions; it played an important role in the identification of the victims of the 2010 air disaster in Tripoli, and in the identification of the victims of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in the Ukraine in 2014.
Bonaparte was commissioned in 2007 by the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI), and has since then been further developed and improved by SNN and its subsidiary SMART Research BV in close collaboration with the NFI.
SMART Research BV is the commercial spin-off company of SNN - the Dutch Foundation for Neural Networks at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. SMART Research develops, maintains and provides support for Bonaparte. SMART Research specializes in applying advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies to solve real world problems. These technologies are also at the basis of the Bonaparte system.
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