Research News

Mechanical Engineering grad students take top honors at medical device conference

Mechanical Engineering graduate students David Comber and Massimiliano Simi have won first and second place in the Three-in-Five competition at the Design of Medical Devices Conference in Minneapolis, Minn. They were among 10 authors selected from the 112 accepted abstracts to give a five-minute presentation composed of no more than three slides. After presenters completed their pitches, they answered questions from a panel of leading medical technology innovators.

The winning presentations are:

Precision Pneumatic Robot for MRI-Guided Neurosurgery

David Comber – Laboratory for the Design and Control of Energetic Systems and Medical and Electromechanical Design (MED) Lab, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vanderbilt University.

Comber is advised by Eric Barth, associate professor of mechanical engineering, and Robert Webster, assistant professor of mechanical engineering.

Magnetic Mechanism for Wireless Capsule Biopsy

Massimiliano Simi – the BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna and STORM Lab, Mechanical Engineering Department, Vanderbilt University.

Simi is advised by Pietro Valdastri, assistant professor of mechanical engineering.

About ViSE

The Vanderbilt Initiative in Surgery and Engineering is an interdisciplinary, trans-institutional center whose mission is the creation, development, implementation, clinical evaluation and commercialization of methods, devices, algorithms, and systems designed to facilitate interventional processes and their outcome.