MEDLab

Lab Director

Robert J Webster III

Affiliated Faculty

Erin Gillaspie

Kyle Weaver

Paul Russell

Robert F. Labadie

Fabien Maldonado

S. Duke Herrell

Jason Mitchell

Thomas J Withrow

Postdoctoral Scholars

Alan Kuntz

Joshua Gafford

Graduate Students (PhD)

E. Bryn Pitt

Dominick Ropella

Max Emerson

Tayfun Efe Ertop

James M Ferguson

Katy Riojas

NSF Fellowship

Margaret Rox

Patrick Wellborn

NSF Fellowship

Patrick Anderson

NSF Fellowship

Michael Siebold

NSF Fellowship

Andria Remirez

NSF Fellowship

Trevor Bruns

Undergraduate Students

Juyoung Kim

Adrian Florea

James Zhu

PhD/Postdoc Alumni

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

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

10/04/2019

We love showing people our robots over in the new VISE Space! This week we gave a tour for visitors from IBM.

09/25/2019

The MED Lab all received their flu shots as a part of Flulapalooza! Vanderbilt University and Medical Center annually provide the flu vaccination to faculty, staff, and students at no charge.

08/15/2019

Virtuoso Surgical, a startup company spun out of the MED lab a couple of years ago, for which Professor Webster serves as President, received a $1.5M NIH SBIR grant to robotically remove central airway obstructions in the lung. This is the second Phase II SBIR grant received by Virtuoso, and brings its total funding raised to approximately $4.5 Million.

08/12/2019

This month we welcomed our long-time collaborator Alan Kuntz as a post-doc. Alan recently finished his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of North Carolina and will be working on a variety of projects in the lab before moving to the University of Utah's Computer Science Department as a faculty member.

08/01/2019

EndoTheia Inc., a startup company that Dr. Webster founded in 2018 to commercialize technology originally invented in the MED Lab, received a $225K NIH STTR grant to develop disposable, steerable tools to enable endoscopic resection of colorectal cancer.

07/18/2019

The MED Lab was awarded another R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health! The project seeks to enable surgeons to remove the prostate through the urethra and perform delicate reconstructive suturing.

06/04/2019

Two patents System and method for endoscopic deployment of robotic concentric tube manipulators for performing surgery and Modular sterilizable robotic system for endonasal surgery have been awarded for MED Lab inventions.

05/18/2019

The 2019 MED Lab crawfish boil was a ragin' cajun success!

04/24/2019

The MED Lab-sponsored Mechanical Engineering senior design team completed their project and presented it at Senior Design Day! The team designed a new, compact actuation unit for the incisionless continuum parallel reconfigurable robot and received the Senior Design Team Award for “showing the most creativity and originality in the design.” Congrats, team!

03/05/2019

Stephanie Amack defends her masters of science thesis "Design of a Compact, Workflow-Oriented Robot for Transbronchial Lung Biopsy." Way to go, Steph!