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

Graduate Students (PhD)

Peter Connor

Emily McCabe

John Peters

Daniel Esser

Jesse d'Almeida

NSF Graduate Fellow

Abby Grillo

Piper Cannon

Jason Shrand

Tayfun Efe Ertop

Undergraduate Students

Kelsey Corwen

Shannon Alptekin

PhD/Postdoc Alumni

James M Ferguson

PhD Student

Margaret Rox

PhD Student

Max Emerson

PhD Student

Andria Remirez

PhD Student

Patrick Wellborn

PhD Student

Joshua Gafford

Postdoc

EndoTheia

Trevor Bruns

PhD Student

Virtuoso Surgical

Ernar Amanov

Postdoc

Josephine Granna

Postdoc

E. Bryn Pitt

PhD Student

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

Katy Riojas

PhD Student

Patrick Anderson

PhD Student

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.

Michael Siebold

PhD Student

Undergraduate Alumni

Mariana Smith

Jacob Rogatinsky

Mustafa Ugur

Emily Tran

Jacob Gloudemans

Narendran Narasimhan

Mia McConnell

Adrian Alepuz

Jasmine Jiang

Anthony Frederick

Nick Pieper

Katie Gosbee

Juyoung Kim

Adrian Florea

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

04/05/2023

Congratulations to graduate student Piper Cannon and undergraduate Mariana Smith for their awards from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP), and to graduate student Jack Peters for his recognition as an Honorable Mention!

04/05/2023

Daniel Esser won the Student Abstract Award for his work on steerable acoustic waveguides for targeted delivery of therapeutic ultrasound, which he will be presenting at the International Society for Therapeutic Ultrasound (ISTU) in Lyon, France.

02/24/2023

Abby Grillo and Jason Shrand presented their research at the SPIE Medical Imaging Conference in San Diego, California! Jack Peters also got to experience his first conference with them to learn about medical imaging.

02/17/2023

Our annual 3-week STEM course that our students teach at Harpeth Hall High School culminated in a field trip to our very own VISE lab! Read more about it at: MED lab’s perennial engineering class for college-bound girls earns praise | Vanderbilt Institute for Surgery and Engineering | Vanderbilt University

02/08/2023

Vanderbilt School of Engineering just published an article talking about Dr. Webster and his research journey.

02/08/2023

Our Undergraduate researcher Mariana will be presenting her work on diameter-changing continuum robots at the International Symposium on Medical Robotics in April 2023!

01/25/2023

Dr. Webster and start-up, Virtuoso, were featured in the IEEE Pulse article “Robots to Improve Surgery for All”

01/20/2023

Graduate students in the lab (Emily, Abby, Peter, Jesse, Jack, and Piper) led a “Winterim” course during winter break at local all-girls high school, Harpeth Hall. The course, titled ‘STAR (Structures, Technology and Robotics): A Hands-On Engineering Experience,’ taught the girls an array of material ranging from computer aided design (CAD) to building your own electric motors and robotic programming. The course even included a field trip to the Vanderbilt Institute for Surgery and Engineering (VISE) where students toured the facility and learned about the exciting research going on there.

12/07/2022

Congratulations to Emily McCabe for her presentation entitled "Autonomous Needle Steering: A Minimally Invasive Surgical Solution In Vivo" She was awarded Honorable Mention for Best Graduate Student Presentation at the annual VISE Symposium. Great work, Emily!

10/20/2022

EndoTheia, Inc., a startup company spun out of the med lab, was awarded Breakthrough Device status by the FDA. It is one of only 7 devices in its clinical area to achieve Breakthrough Device status to date! https://engineering.vanderbilt.edu/news/2023/company-co-founded-by-vande...