The Vanderbilt Institute for Surgery and Engineering is an interdisciplinary, trans-institutional structure designed to facilitate interactions and exchanges between engineers and physicians. Engineering expertise includes modeling, robotics, imaging, image processing and analysis, devices, system integration, and instrumentation. A significant VISE clinical application has been the development of minimally invasive, robotic-assisted cochlear implant surgery. Other VISE clinical applications include image-guided brain, kidney, liver, pancreas, or prostate surgery; guidance for transorbital therapy; assistance for deep brain stimulators placement and programming; and ophthalmic microsurgery.