BioRobotics Lab demonstrates research technologies at the IEEE Seattle 110th Anniversary Celebration

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SeattleIEEE110_JAHThis last Sunday evening, members of the UW BRL attended the IEEE Seattle Section’s 110th Anniversary Celebration event at the Seattle Pacific Center. Senator Maria Cantwell joined regional IEEE members to celebrate this impressive anniversary. Graduate student researchers Jeffrey Herron and Kevin Huang brought demos to the event to showcase ongoing research from the UW BioRobotics Lab.

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BioRobotics Lab Summer High School and Undergraduate Researchers

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This summer the BioRobotics Lab hosted great student researchers from local highschools and colleges from around the country! Their research was supported through the NSF Engineering Research Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering REU and YSP programs. Here is an overview of the great work these students did:

Alan Casalla, an Electrical Engineering Undergraduate from MIT, spent the summer working on microcontroller firmware and Android app development to aid in tremor research.
Alan Casalla, an electrical engineering undergraduate from MIT, spent the summer working on microcontroller-based sensor firmware and an Android application to aid in tremor research. He was mentored by Jeffrey Herron.
Ben Elliott, a senior at Mercer Island Highschool, volunteered this summer in the BRL to collaborate with Francisco Garcia to build sensory systems for lower-limb prosthetic users
Ben Elliott, a senior at Mercer Island Highschool, volunteered this summer in the BRL to collaborate with Francisco Garcia to build sensory systems for lower-limb prosthetic users. He was mentored by Iris Jiang.
Francisco Garcia, an Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate from SDSU, spent the summer building a system to sense the pressure distribution across the foot in order to provide sensory feedback for prosthetic users.
Francisco Garcia, a mechanical engineering undergraduate from SDSU, spent the summer building a system to sense the pressure distribution across the foot in order to provide sensory feedback for prosthetic users. He was mentored by Iris Jiang.
Joi Officer is a mathematics and engineering undergraduate from Spelman College. She spent the summer working on a tool to help automate TMR sensory mapping procedures.
Joi Officer is a mathematics and engineering undergraduate from Spelman College. She spent the summer working on a tool to help automate TMR sensory mapping procedures. She was mentored by Iris Jiang.
Hannah Werbel is going to be a senior at Skyline High School. She spent the summer learning how to use Matlab and Arduino to build tools for BCI security experimental data analysis.
Hannah Werbel is going to be a senior at Skyline High School. She spent the summer learning how to use Matlab and Arduino to build tools for BCI security experimental data analysis. She was mentored by Tamara Bonaci.

Thank you so much for your great work! You all show such great potential and we look forward to keeping track of your future achievements!

BRL hosts UW Math Academy Focus Group

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The BioRobotics Lab ran a 3-day workshop for highschool Math Academy students. This workshop introduced haptic enabled systems and allowed the students to program and experiment with haptic devices.

BRL attends the 4th Biennial North American Summer School on Surgical Robotics

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Professor Blake Hannaford and two of BRL Students, Nava Aghdasi and Mohammad Haghighipanah, attended the 4th Biennial North American Summer School on Surgical Robotics. The Summer school was at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh for a week. Click here for more info about the program

Participants, PhD students, MD students and postdocs, had a chance to attend several lectures which gave them an in-depth coverage of topics such as surgical robotics, haptics, medical imaging, computer- assisted surgical planning, surgical simulation, training, and performance assessment. Attendees had the opportunity to view live cardiac robotic surgery and ask questions from surgeon during the surgery. On the fourth day, they went to Allegheny General Hospital to gain hands-on labs experience with laparoscopic tools and the Da Vinci surgical robot.

On the third day of the summer school Professor Blake Hannaford gave a lecture on “Analysis and Control Architecture for Semiautonomous Robotic Surgery.”
On the third day of the summer school Professor Blake Hannaford gave a lecture on “Analysis and Control Architecture for Semiautonomous Robotic Surgery.”

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