MEDLab

Lab Director

Robert J Webster III

Affiliated Faculty

Erin Gillaspie

Paul Russell

Robert F. Labadie

Fabien Maldonado

S. Duke Herrell

Jason Mitchell

Thomas J Withrow

Postdoctoral Scholars

Ernar Amanov

Josephine Granna

Graduate Students (PhD)

Jason Shrand

E. Bryn Pitt

Max Emerson

Tayfun Efe Ertop

James M Ferguson

Katy Riojas

NSF Fellowship

Margaret Rox

Patrick Anderson

NSF Fellowship

Michael Siebold

NSF Fellowship

Andria Remirez

NSF Fellowship

Undergraduate Students

Juyoung Kim

Adrian Florea

PhD/Postdoc Alumni

Patrick Wellborn

PhD Student

Joshua Gafford

Postdoc

EndoTheia

Trevor Bruns

PhD Student

Virtuoso Surgical

Alan Kuntz

Postdoc

Assistant Prof., Univ. Utah

Yue Chen

Co-Advised PhD Student

Assistant Prof., UARK

Smita De

Postdoc

Cleveland Clinic

Loris Fichera

Postdoc

Assistant Prof., WPI

Isuru Godage

Postdoc

Assistant Prof., DePaul

Richard Hendrick

PhD Student

Virtuoso Surgical

Neal Dillon

PhD Student

Virtuoso Surgical

Art Mahoney

Postdoc

Sarcos Robotics

Philip Swaney

PhD Student

Tech Transfer Officer, Vanderbilt

Hunter Gilbert

PhD Student

Assistant Prof., LSU

David Comber

Co-Advised PhD Student

Sarcos Robotics

Lou Kratchman

PhD Student

Draper Labs

Raul Wirz

Postdoc

Software Engr., Globus Med.

Ray Lathrop

PhD Student

Eli Lilly

Jenna Gorlewicz

PhD Student

Assistant Prof., SLU

Jessica Burgner

Postdoc

Faculty, MZH Hannover

Caleb Rucker

PhD Student

Assistant Prof., UT Knoxville

Jadav Das

Co-Advised PhD Student

Rockwell Automation, Inc.

Undergraduate Alumni

Jacob Rogatinsky

Mustafa Ugur

Emily Tran

Jacob Gloudemans

Narendran Narasimhan

Mia McConnell

Adrian Alepuz

Jasmine Jiang

Anthony Frederick

Nick Pieper

Katie Gosbee

James Zhu

Evan Blum

Nick Catalan

Patrick Hall

Cindy Lin Liu

Matthew Medlock

Mark Chambliss

Brandon Bolds

Todd Dutton

Rob Pieper

Sam Nackman

Tiffany Cheng

Jim Boyle

Randy Smith

Xavier Waller

David Gostin

Tyler Steier

Justin Saunders

Zach Smith

Mohammed (Mish) Rahman

Stephen (Sam) Malanowski

Jordan Croom

Amri Abdul Razak

Michael Jekot

Marlena Clark

Syed Hamid

Sani Sulaiman

Scott Nill

Dexter Watkins

Dylan P Losey

Peter York

Yifan Zhu

Erik Lamers

Matthew Hostetler

Recent News

01/01/2021

Kyle Leleux joined the MEDLab at the start of the new year. He is pursuing a PhD in Mechanical Engineering. Welcome, Kyle! We look forward to all the cool research you will be doing!

11/05/2020

Two patents have been awarded for MED Lab inventions. The first patent is for a snare tool manipulator system, and the second patent is for a bronchoscopic continuum robot system for transoral lung access. Congratulations to the inventors!

10/23/2020

EndoTheia, Inc., a startup company from the MED Lab, has begun formal operations and moved into a new office space near downtown Nashville! Equipped with new laser cutters and 3D printers, they are ready to start commercializing steerable sheaths for flexible endoscopy.

10/05/2020

Congratulations to graduate student Tayfun Efe Ertop and team for being selected as a Best Student Paper Finalist at the 2020 Dynamic Systems and Controls Conference! Tayfun's paper is titled "Steerable Needle Trajectory Following in the Lung: Torsional Deadband Compensation and Full Pose Estimation with 5DOF Feedback for Needles Passing Through Flexible Endoscopes." He presented his work virtually and was chosen as a finalist from approximately 200 other papers!

09/30/2020

Virtuoso Surgical, a startup company from the MED Lab, where many former lab members work, has raised $1.5 Million over the past few months (and counting!) through a Regulation A+ offering of shares to the general public. The funding will support the company’s ongoing work to bring concentric tube robots to operating rooms around the world!

08/24/2020

Dr. Webster started his 3rd year of teaching the class "Innovation Realization: From Academic Insight to Entrepreneurial Impact." The class combines teams of engineering Ph.D. students, law students, and MBA students to work on developing research ideas into products with a business plan!

08/03/2020

Jason Shrand joined the MED Lab this summer. He is pursuing a PhD in Mechanical Engineering. Welcome, Jason!

08/01/2020

EndoTheia, Inc., a startup company from the MED Lab, was awarded a $1.2M Phase II SBIR grant from the NIH to develop a steerable medical device for endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP). This device seeks to eliminate the need for duodenoscopes that are difficult to sterilize and have high infection rates.

07/31/2020

Dr. Joshua Gafford finished his postdoc in MED Lab and is now the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of EndoTheia. EndoTheia is a startup company that Dr. Webster co-founded with Dr. Gafford in 2018 to commercialize technology originally invented in the MED Lab.

07/28/2020

The MED Lab's image guidance team has just completed the first in-human trial of our Surgical GPS system for the da Vinci Robot. Congrats, team!