Erich Rutz joined the orthopaedic department and the Hugh Williamson Gait Laboratory at the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) in April 2020. For the last 15 years, he has worked as a consultant at the University Children’s Hospital Basel, Switzerland, where he was head of the Gait Laboratory and head of Neuromuscular Hip Surgery Programme. He has a strong interest in all neuromuscular conditions, in particular in cerebral palsy (CP). In 2009/2010, he worked as a research fellow in the Hugh Williamson Gait Laboratory at RCH on the major project “Outcomes of Single-event Multilevel Surgery (SEMLS)” in children with CP. Erich focuses on the surgical treatment of disabled, ambulant and non-ambulant, children. His surgical expertise is in both surgery for ambulant children (SEMLS) and one-stage hip reconstruction. He completed his habilitation thesis (“Venia Docendi”) in 2013 at the medical faculty of the University Basel, which is the highest university degree that can be awarded for orthopaedics and traumatology in the musculoskeletal system. In addition, he completed his Ph.D. thesis in biomechanics in June 2021. In March 2022, he was appointed the inaugural Bob Dickens Chair for Paediatric Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Melbourne.